Heaven and Hell

Emanuel Swedenborg
Translated by George F. Dole Introduction by Colin Wilson

1758

SWEDENBORG FOUNDATION West Chester, Pennsylvania

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SWEDENBORG BOOK CENTRE INFORMATION SWEDENBORG 279 BURNHAMTHORPE ROAD ETOBICOKE, ONT. M9B 1Z6 1976, 1979 by the Swedenborg Foundation, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America First published in Latin, 1758, De Coelo et ejus mirabilibus, et de Inferno, ex auditis et visis First English translation published in the U.S.A., 1812 First Dole translation, 1976 Revised Dole translation, 1979 First Dole large print edition, 1982 Fourth Dole reprint, 1994 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 81- 52785 ISBN 0-87785-153-0 For information, contact: Swedenborg Foundation 320 North Church Street West Chester, Pennsylvania 19380

Contents
Introduction by Colin Wilson
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Translators Preface

PART I * Heaven
1. The Lord Is Heavens God 2. The Lords Divine Makes Heaven 3. The Lords Divine in Heaven Is Love for Him and Charity toward Ones Neighbor 4. Heaven Is Divided into Two Kingdoms 5. There Are Three Heavens 6. The Heavens Are Made up of Countless Communities 7. Each Community Is a Heaven in a Smaller Form, and Each Angel a Heaven in the Smallest Form 8. Heaven, If Grasped As a Single Entity, Reflects a Single Person 9. Each Community in the Heavens Reflects a Single Person 10. Each Angel Is Therefore in a Perfect Human Form 11. Heaven As a Whole and in Its Parts Reflects a Person because It Stems from the Lords Divine Human 12. There Is a Correspondence between Everything in Heaven and Everything in Man 13. Heaven Has a Correspondence with Everything on Earth 14. The Sun in Heaven 15. Light and Warmth in Heaven 16. The Four Major Regions in Heaven 17. Changes of State of Angels in Heaven 18. Time in Heaven 19. Representations and Appearances in Heaven 20. The Clothes Angels Are Seen Wearing 21. Angels Homes and Houses 22. Space in Heaven 23. Heavens Form, Which Patterns Associations and Communications There
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24. Governments in Heaven 25. Divine Worship in Heaven 26. The Power of Heavens Angels 27. Angels Language 28. Angels Speech with Man 29. Written Materials in Heaven 30. The Wisdom of Heavens Angels 31. Angels State of Innocence in Heaven 32. The State of Peace in Heaven 33. Heavens Bond with the Human Race 34. Heavens Bond with Man through the Word 35. Heaven and Hell Are from the Human Race 36. The Heathen or People outside the Church in Heaven 37. Children in Heaven 38. Wise and Simple People in Heaven 39. Rich and Poor People in Heaven 40. Marriages in Heaven 41. Angels Occupations in Heaven 42. Heavenly Joy and Happiness 43. The Vastness of Heaven

PART II * The World of Spirits and Mans State after Death

44. What the World of Spirits Is 45. Everyone Is a Spirit As Far As His More Inward Reaches Are Concerned 46. Mans Awakening from the Dead and Entrance into Eternal Life
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47. After Death, People Exist in a Perfect Human Form 48. After Death, a Person Is Engaged in Every Sense, Memory, Thought, and Affection He Was Engaged in, in the World: He Leaves Nothing behind except His Earthly Body 49. A Persons Quality after Death Is the Same As the Quality of His Life in the World Was 50. After Death, Everyones Life Pleasures Are Changed into Things That Correspond to Them 51. Mans First State after Death 52. Mans Second State after Death 53. Mans Third State after Death, Which Is a State of Instruction for People Who Are Entering Heaven 54. No One Enters Heaven by Direct Mercy 55. Leading a Heaven-Bound Life Is Not As Hard As People Believe

PART III * Hell

56. The Lord Governs the Hells 57. The Lord Does Not Cast Anyone into Hell Rather, the Person Himself Does 58. All the People Who Are in the Hells Are Involved in Evil Things and Consequent False Things As a Result of Their Loves of Themselves and the World 59. What Hell-Fire and Gnashing of Teeth Are 60. The Malice and Unspeakable Arts of Hellish Spirits 61. The Appearance, Location, and Abundance of Hells 62. The Balance between Heaven and Hell 63. Man Is in a Freedom of Means of the Balance between Heaven and Hell

Books FROM THE SWEDENBORG FOUNDATION

The Standard Edition of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg The thirty-volume set includes: Apocalypse Explained (6 vols.)
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Apocalypse Revealed (2 vols.) Arcana Coelestia (12 vols.) Conjugial Love Divine Love and Wisdom Divine Providence Four Doctrines Heaven and Hell Miscellaneous Theological Works Posthumous Theological Works (2 vols.) True Christian Religion (2 vols.) 51/8 x 8, casebound, approximately 500 pages each $300 for complete set or $12 individually, subject to change Books ABOUT SWEDENBORG A Scientist Explores Spirit: A Compact Biography of Emanuel Swedenborg, with Key Concepts of Swedenborgs Theology G.F. Dole and Robert H. Kirven 6 x 9 paperback $9.95 Swedenborg: Life and Teaching George Trobridge 6 x 9 paperback $ 9.50; casebound $14.95 To place an order or request a catalog, call (800) 355- 3222 or write: Swedenborg Foundation P.O. Box 549, West Chester, Pennsylvania 19381

INTRODUCTION
There is a paradox involved in the basic quality of human existence. Our hands touch solid objects, our eyes see shapes and colors, our everyday horizons are narrow; yet there are times when the soul seems to stand on hilltops and to glimpse immense vistas of meaning. This feeling is not confined to saints or poets or philosopherswe all have it at certain moments of happiness and relaxation. It seems somehow realer than the trivialities of everyday existence. And this is the paradox. For surely reality means this world of solid objects that surround us, and the things they tell us about on television news? The poet replies, No, these things are not realer than the mystical vision; they are only more close-up. And be continues to try to find his way back to the hilltops. Many of the finest poets and artists of the 19th century died of exhaustion and despair at being unable to find them again. Until the seventeenth century, European civilization was essentially Christianwhich meant that man had a clear idea of the meaning of human existence. There was a heaven above and a hell beneath, and man was suspended somewhere between the two, able to glimpse heaven or sink into hell. That meant, essentially, that there was a greater Meaning behind the trivial meanings of his everyday existence, and he felt that everything he did had an invisible significance, which would become clear when he reached the After Life.
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Science not only destroyed the religious myths, but also their deeper meanings. If man believes in nothing but the material world, he becomes a victim of the narrowness of his own consciousness. He is trapped in triviality. Religion gave man a reason for trying to reach the starsfor creating the magnificent spires and arches of Gothic cathedrals, the great masses of the medieval composers, the stained glass of Chartres, the mosaics of Michelangelo. Where there is a distance between heaven and earth there is also a great vault in which the spirit can soar. When heaven descends to earth, poetry has to crawl on its bands and knees. Swedenborg belonged to an age of faith, when the majority of people believed in angels and devils; now, the new German critics insisted that the Bible was merely a piece of imaginative fiction, and that Jesus never existed. Intellectual men began to look back on the age of faith with nostalgia. Many of themlike Carlyle, Tennyson, Emerson, Melvillewere men of religious feelings who were totally unable to accept traditional Christianity; they felt stranded in an emotional wasteland. In 1850, Emerson produced a long essay on Swedenborg in his Representative Men, treating him as one of the great mystical giants: One of the . mastodons of literature he is not to be measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars. . . . Our books are false by being fragmentary. . . . But Swedenborg is systematic and respective of the world in every sentence . . . his faculties work with astronomic punctuality, and this admirable writing is pure from all pertness or egoism. But he goes on to warn that to understand Swedenborg requires almost a genius equal to his own. At the age of fourteen, I was an ardent admirer of Emerson; I had expected his essays to be stuffy, and was amazed to discover that they were clear, shrewd, and imbued with a kind of heroic individualism. Representative Men impressed me even more; so when I saw the old Everyman edition of True Christian Religion in a Leicester bookshop, I saved up two weeks pocket money and bought it. The disappointment was immense. It seemed to consist almost entirely of quotations from the scriptures, and long discussions of their precise meaning. That seemed to me a sheer waste of time. The Bible might be an extraordinary historical and religious document; but I was convinced that it was inspired only in the same sense as Shakespeares plays or Dantes Divine Comedy. So it seemed pointless to discuss its words as if they were mathematical propositions from which you could prove something. And then there were those incredible sections called Memorabilia, in which Swedenborg described his discussions with angels. Most of them read like parables; but apparently Swedenborg insisted that they had actually taken place. At which point, I decided that Swedenborg was a man whose brain had addled through too much brooding on religionlike the religious nuts who came to our front door with tracts and gramophones. I pushed the book into a corner of the bookcase, and forgot about it. Two years later, I discovered the poetry of William Blake, and began to read everything I could find about him. It seemed that in spite of the hostile remarks about Swedenborg, Blake had been strongly influenced by him. That was interesting, for Blake seemed to possess a healthy and skeptical intellectnot unlike that of Bernard Shaw. I borrowed Cyriel Sigstedts The Swedenborg Epic* from the library, and was startled to discover that Swedenborg began life as a scientist and engineer, and that everyone who met him agreed that he was a polite, logical man with a kindly manner and a sense of humor. And then there were those baffling stories of his second sight. About to sit down to dinner in Gothenburg, Swedenborg turned pale and told the company that a great fire had just broken out in Stockholm, three hundred miles away. Two hours later, he said: Thank heavens, the fire is now under control. It had almost reached my doorstep. Two days later, a letter arrived from Stockholm confirming everything he had said. That, of course, is second sight, and many people possess it. The same might be said for the story of how he helped Madame Marteville, the widow of the Dutch ambassador, who had received a bill from a silversmith, although she was convinced that her husband had paid it; a few days later, Swedenborg told her that the receipted bill could be found in a secret drawer of a
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certain bureau. The bill was found where he had described it. Swedenborg claimed he had obtained the information direct from the deceased ambassador in the spirit world. He made the same claim about a message from the deceased brother of the Queen of Sweden; when Swedenborg described to her the contents of the last letter she had sent to her brother, the queen exclaimed No one but God knows this secret. Medieval culture was based on saints and visionaries; modern culture is based on Freud, Darwin and Marx. We envy Dante and Fra Angelico for having a heaven to soar into. And we recognize that men like Pascal, Blake, Swedenborg were attempting to reassert the basic reality of heaven, and so to create the conditions in which the spirit could soar. Our materialistic philosophy has made us slaves of the trivial. Yet how could Swedenborg and Blake begin to undermine this materialism? Only by asserting the solid reality of the visionary world. Blake said he saw a tree full of angels. Possibly he was lyingor exaggerating. But what of a man who says, No, it is just a tree. Is he not lying too? Perhaps Blakes angels are closer to the truth. . The argument is fair; but it begs the question of Swedenborgs visions. He insisted that he was not exaggerating or telling lies, or speaking in parables. Yet in another book The describes the inhabitants of the moon, Mars and Venus (admittedly, their spiritual inhabitants; not solid creatures). Which brings us back to the problem that baffled his contemporaries. Was he a genuine visionary, a God-inspired prophet? Or was he suffering from delusions? Of one thing there can be no doubt: Swedenborgs contemporaries were in no position to answer that question. For there were only two possible schools of thought: scientists, who would dismiss the whole thing as superstition, and orthodox Christians who would admit that, in theory at any rate, there was no reason why a chosen vessel should not be taken on a circular tour of heaven. In the late 19th century, science would begin to admit a third possibility: that the mind contains unexplored depths in which the visions might have originated. Freuds interpretation of that possibility would have been wholly negative: that the visions were basically some form of mental illness or compensation mechanism. But his ex-disciple Carl Jung suggested altogether more interesting possibilities. The subconscious mind is not a cellar filled with decaying rubbish and repressed passions. In fact, we make a mistake in thinking of the subconscious as something inside us. Perhaps the truth may be that we are inside it, like fishes in the sea. This sea Contains many universal symbols, or archetypes, which are common to us all. What Jung was asserting was that there are things in the mind that have an independent existence, just like the objects around us in the material world. Jung developed a technique called active imagination that enabled him to descend into his own mind and hold conversations with imaginary beings. There was a character whom he called Philemon, and Jung says, In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not 1. [My italics.] In 1953, the writer Aldous Huxley experimented with the drug mescaline sulphate, which produced the effect of intensifying his perception of reality, and making him aware that when we think we are seeing the world, we are actually perceiving it through a thick mental blanket of our own concepts and desires. And in a book whose titleHeaven and Hellseems to be a deliberate evocation of Swedenborg, he stated, Like the earth of a hundred years ago, our mind still has its darkest Africas, its unmapped Borneos and Amazonian basins. And he went on to say that these unexplored continents of the mind contain creatures as strange and improbable as the giraffe and duckbilled platypus. These observations, while they leave certain basic questions unanswered, nevertheless enable us to understand that the words vision and reality are not mutually exclusive. Shaw was hinting at the same thing when he made his Joan of Arc say that God speaks to us through the imagination. He was using the word imagination in Blakes sense. (Vision or Imagination is
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a Representation of what Eternally Exists) The same point is made very clearly in an important recent work, Essay on the Origin of Thought by Jurij Moskvitin (Moskvitin, Jurij, Essay on the Origin of Thought. (Ohio University Press, 1974)) - a Danish philosopher. He began by observing that when he lay with his eyes half-closed in the sunlight, looking at the sky through his eyelashes, he became aware of a fascinating spectrum of colors, and of geometric patterns. Gradually, he accustomed himself to focusing these patterns at will, and concluded that they were made up of dancing sparks. Further observation convinced him that the sparks were not really independent; they were prominent parts of certain smoke-like forms. He explains this with a useful image, saying that if you look at the sea in the sunlight, the breaking waves seem to be tipped with light, but that if you stare hard, these sparks are seen to be part of rings and nets that move over the water. He goes on to say that the smoke-like forms became the elements of waking dreams, forming persons, landscapes, strange mathematical forms . It struck him that much religious art seems to contain perceptions of these forms. The actual experience is like a Rorschach testalways interpreted according to what a man has in his mind.... This is the derivation of all ghosts, elves and demons. Moskvitin is perhaps not as clear as he might beand much of the book is impossibly abstractbut the basic meaning seems clear. We are inclined to think of our perception as a kind of mirror, merely reflecting the reality around us. You are like a man looking through a reflecting telescope; light travels from that book to the mirror, and is reflected down to you, looking through the eyepiece. Moskvitin is saying that in perception, we project some kind of magic element from behind the eyes: the world is not reflected in a mirror, but in something more like the moving surface of the sea, and we infer the reality through a skill developed over a lifetime. (Moskvitin mentions, as a parallel, how the satin draperies in a Dutch painting, or a realistic-looking wine glass, are actually seen, on closer inspection, to be a few careless strokes of colored paint, suggesting rather than depicting.) And in his book on Swedenborg, The Presence of Other Worlds, (Wilson Van Dusen, The Presence of Other Worlds: The Psychological I Spiritual Findings of Emanuel Swedenborg. (West Chester, Pennsylvania Swedenborg Foundation, 1991)). Dr. Wilson Van Dusen advances suggestions about Swedenborgs visions that are based on his own experience of meditation and hypnagogic states (i.e. states that exist on the borderline of sleeping and waking). Most of us observe such states briefly, then fall asleep. Van Dusen insists that it is possible to remain awake, observing mental processes occur spontaneously. Like Jung, he notes that, There is enough self-awareness in the hypnagogic state to remember, record and even talk to inner processes. And now, I think, we may say that we are getting altogether closer to the reality of Swedenborgs visionary experiencesor at least, to their basic mechanisms. Moskvitin comments that, What I felt to be me and my thoughts were actually the things to be observed. That is to say when a man becomes practiced in this kind of observation be somehow withdraws behind his thoughts, feelings and impressions, no longer assuming that they are part of himself. It is as if, in our normal state, we imagined that our clothes were a part of our bodies, and had to learn to observe the sensations in the skin to recognize that clothes are quite separate from the rest of us. Beyond the hypnagogic state lies the trance state, in which the naked self, so to speak, learns to descend into the inner world without falling asleep. Consciousness is intensified, but bodily awareness is lost. And at this point, we must admit that it is difficult to follow Swedenborgor Van Dusenany further. Were the angels and devils seen by Swedenborg real beings? Or were they Rorschach blots transformed by Swedenborgs subconscious? Or by Jungs racial unconscious? Although we certainly know more about these inner states than Swedenborgs contemporaries, we still
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have only half the answer, or perhaps even less. Jung believed that Philemon was, in fact, a wiser self, representing superior insight. Other modern psychologists have made use of the concept of the superconscious mind. For if the mind has its subconscious cellar, may it not also have a superconscious attic, a part of the mind that possesses deeper insight and higher knowledge than the everyday self? Many water diviners believe that their dowsing rods respond to the knowledge of the superconscious mind; this seems to be confirmed by the fact that a good dowser can divine for anything, simply by tuning in. If he is dowsing for oil or iron ore, his rod will ignore water. And so it seems probable, at least, that Swedenborgs angels were, like Phi-lemon, representatives of his higher self, and that his visions of heaven and hell were symbolic representations of real inner states encountered by the soul after death. (According to Swedenborg, the world after death consists entirely of inner states, and has no external space and time like our world.) At the same time, we must admit that it is possible that these angels were, in fact, higher beings, and not symbols created by the mind. Van Dusen states flatly that these inner states raise the issue of the presence of other spiritual beings interacting in our lives. Novels like The Exorcist have certainly popularized the possibility that demonic forces might exist independent of the human mind. And when we begin to examine recorded cases of possession, we again become aware of the ambiguities that are concealed by our clear, scientific concepts. Jung began his career as a psychologist by observing a female cousin who seemed to possess two completely distinct personalities. Psychologists who have studied cases of dualand even multiplepersonalities conclude that there are strange ways in which the self can split into several mutually independent personalities. This seems to suggest that we are dealing simply with a Freudian problem of repression. But then, how do we explain how possessed people occasionally speak in languages of which they have no knowledgefor example, Latin? An experience recorded by the paranormal researcher Alan Vaughan may help to throw light on one aspect of Swedenborgs powers. At the beginning of Patterns of Prophecy, he explains how he became interested in the power of foreseeing the future. Experimenting alone with a Ouija board, Vaughan found himself possessed by a neurotic woman, whose voice somehow got inside his head. Experimenting with another friend, Vaughan suddenly experienced a second presence inside his headthis time a benevolent presence, which made him write out a message: Each of us has a spirit while living. Do not meddle with the spirits of the dead. Suddenly, a third presence seemed to rise inside him with a flood of energy, driving out both the other two. In this moment of dispossession, Vaughan experienced a tremendous elation and well-being, and realized that he could read other peoples minds, and see into the future through some kind of extended awareness. The experience led to his interest in prophetic dreams. Quite obviously, we stand on the borderline of a new domain of knowledge, and we know as little of it as Marco Polo knew of China, or the earliest explorers of Africa. One thing seems clear: there are mental states in which we can glimpse vistas of knowledge that remain concealed from us in everyday consciousness. Our great mistake lies in supposing that the kind of knowledge we acquire slowly over a lifetime is real, ultimate knowledge. We are probably like blind men, born into a world in which we have to find our way around by the sense of touchand by the use of walking sticks, scientific extensions of sensory knowledge. Like the citizens of Wells country of the blind, we take it as a law of nature that only certain forms of knowledge are possible (for example, that you cannot know when a man is approaching until he is close enough to hear). Vaughans sudden glimpse of a power to read other peoples minds and see into the future seems to be the equivalent of sight in our blind men. We know that Swedenborg always possessed unusual intellectual powers, and a remarkable ability to concentrate for long periods. We know that he went through great spiritual crises in his sixth decade, and it seems probable that his frantic struggles led to the activation of this new
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faculty. Books like Divine Providence and Divine Love and Wisdom were not written in some confused state of religious mania, but in a strange state of visionary clarity that led him to write at top speed to try to convey everything he saw. He lived in a religious age; his father was a bishop; he had studied the Bible since childhood. It was therefore natural that his visions expressed themselves in terms of the Bible. If he had been brought up on the works of Shakespeare or Dante, no doubt his ideas would have expressed themselves in the form of gigantic commentaries on the Tragedies or the Divine Comedy. The chief obstacle to the modern understanding of Swedenborg is that few of us can take the Bible for granted in the way that our great-grandfathers did. This is a sad reflection on the modern age; and it means that if anyone is anxious to reach some understanding of Swedenborgs strange mystical vision, he will have to take the trouble to become acquainted with this vital part of our literary heritage. For the beginner, patience is certainly necessary; originally written in Latin, by a man whose previous works had all been scientific treatises, their style makes an initial impression of dullness. Once you have grown accustomed to his habit of mind, they are readable enough, and a good modern translation makes a considerable difference. It quickly dawned on me that I was mistaken about one thing. Swedenborg is no cranky religious messiah, demanding total credence and allegiance. He admits that he is an intellectual, who prefers to be understood rather than believed. One of the Memorabilia in his True Christian Religion describes his encounter (in the spirit world, of course), with a preacher whose religious obscurities are punctuated with the statement that it is important to keep our reason in subjection to faith. This view makes Swedenborg see red. Swedenborg tells the priest that there is no point in talking about mysteries unless you are prepared to try and look inside them and try to understand them. The priest is furious, and the congregation make their way home contentedly, intoxicated with paradoxes, bewildered with verbiage and enveloped in darkness. This very quickly becomes plain as you read Swedenborg: he is obsessed with making himself clear. No one ever cared less about trying to impress with tricks of style or poetic images. Compared to some of the Catholic saintsTheresa of Avila, for example-he seems to be almost a rationalist. Heaven and Hell has always been Swedenborgs most popular book because it can be read with a minimum of such preparation. Yet even this book has its pitfalls. Emerson said of it: A vampire sits in the seat of the prophet, and turns with gloomy appetite to the images of pain. Indeed, a bird does not more readily weave its nest . . . than this seer of the souls substructs a new hell and pit, each more abominable than the last. . . Except Rabelais and Dean Swift, nobody ever had such science of filth and corruption. This makes Swedenborg sound like an old fashioned hellfire preacher. Yet the Swedish genius Strindberg, passing through a severe psychological crisis that brought him to the brink of madness, found sanity in Heaven and Hell, recognizing that Swedenborg had described the succession of mental states and decisions that had brought him to the brink of his own private hell. Strindberg became increasingly convinced that Swedenborg was a visionary genius who had foreseen the spiritual torments of the twentieth century. Strindberg himself foretold them with extraordinary clarity, even though he died before the first world war. When the psychologist William James passed through a crisis of depression and panic anxiety, he used Swedenborgs term vastation to describe the state. And this was natural enough since his own father, Henry James, Sr., had been brought back from the brink of mental and physical breakdown by the discovery of Swedenborgs works. The breakdown had come upon him suddenly and without warning, one day after eating a comfortable dinner, sitting idly at the table and feeling rather pleased with himself. Suddenlyin a lightning flash, as it were-fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. To all appearances it was a perfectly insane and abject terror, without ostensible cause, and only to be accounted for, to my perplexed imagination, by some damned shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of
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the room, and raying out from his fetid personality influences fatal to life. . . The depression and terror continued for two years, until a woman friend told him that he was suffering from what Swedenborg called vastation, and that it could well be the gateway to some inward transformation. James was so ill that he was not allowed to read; nevertheless, he bought two volumes of Swedenborg and kept them by his bed, dipping into them for a few sentences at a time. Finally, he began to read avidly. I read from the first with palpitating interest. My heart divined, even before my intelligence was prepared to do justice to the books, the unequalled amount of truth to be found in them. Imagine a fever patient, sufficiently restored of his malady to think of something besides himself, suddenly transported where the free airs of heaven blow upon him, and the sound of running water refreshes his jaded sense; and you have a feeble image of my delight in reading. . . . James became convinced that the cause of all his suffering had been the profound unconscious death I bore about in my. . . selfhood. Swedenborgs crises had brought him close to insanity; this is undoubtedly why he possesses such extraordinary power to bring peace to tormented souls like Strindberg and James. One thunderstorm followed another. My enduring these storms was a matter of brute strength. Others have been shattered by themNietzsche and Hlderlin, and many others. But there was a demoniac strength in me, and from the beginning there was no doubt in my mind that I must find the meaning of what I was experiencing . . . This is not Swedenborg speakingas the reference to Nietzsche and Hlderlin must have made plainbut Jung. Yet no one who has read both Jung and Swedenborg can doubt that it was the mystic, not the psychologist, who ventured furthest into the depths of this alien world that lies inside us. Heaven and Hell is the best introduction to Swedenborg because it has the quality of a compressed image of all his theological works. His writings amount to fifty or so heavy volumes, and their range is immense-from a study of the human brain to a study of the Pentateuch that is longer than the Old Testament itself. The books represent a spiritual journey through an unmapped continent; there are vast forests, underground rivers, burning mountains. Emerson was right to classify Swedenborg with Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe. He is not ultimately unknowable; but complete Understanding would cost years of effort. A book like this can at least offer a glimpse of the unmapped continent; but it can give no idea of its size. Colin Wilson Cornwall, 1978

TRANSLATORS PREFACE There have been at least nineteen distinct translations or revisions of translations of Swedenborgs Heaven and Hell in English since 1778, the most recent being the 1958 revision by Doris Harley of the 1900 translation by J. C. Ager. The impetus for the present version, then, does not come from any fear of the works unavailability. Rather, it comes from the conviction that the directness and simplicity of the Latin text is an integral part of its design, and has been consistently obscured in English translations by the choice of a heavily Latinate style. The present effort, then, is not an attempt at popularization. In fact, several distinctions are here consistently observed which are consistently ignored in other versions. The translators task has been seen as finding an English style, both in vocabulary and syntax, comparable to that of the Latin. This has involved such steps as finding equivalent syntactic devices rather than adopting classical ones, and translating the punctuation as consciously and consistently as possible. The first draft and typescript were done with virtually no reference to other translations,
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primarily to avoid reacting to the opinions of others. A draft portion of the manuscript was submitted to a number of other translators before final revision. Mr. John Chadwick responded most helpfully; I have adopted most of his suggestions and have tried to locate the kinds of faults he observed elsewhere, and to correct them. The final revisions, which uncovered many further errors, involved a line by line comparison with the Harley version mentioned above. For purposes of the present edition, Swedenborgs copious references to his Arcana Coelestia have been omitted. Bibliographical information on other works referred to may be found at the back of the book. Biblical quotations are translated directly from Swedenborgs Latin. Swedenborg numbered each section. This numbering is uniform in all editions and has been retained in the margins. The subsection numbers are from 1. F. Potts The Swedenborg Concordance. The new reader will note that these numbers are invaluable in giving consistency to references in a work that has appeared in so many editions. No translation can present all the dimensions of its original, in this sense, a Standard Edition is not to be desired. It is my hope that the present version will stand beside others, and will at least suggest a clarity and concreteness of thought in the original that has usually been obscured. I may hope also that it will provoke constructive discussion in the small circle of translators of Swedenborg. The person who translates alone cannot hope to find optimum solutions to every problem, and I trust that better work will emerge in the course of time with the exchange of ideas and information. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to many people whose interest has encouraged methey do not know how helpful they have beenand particularly to the Swedenborg Foundation for its consistent and cheerful support. G. F. Dole Sharon, Mass. March 1975

PART I HEAVEN
1. THE LORD IS HEAVENS GOD
1. In Matthew 24, the Lord is talking to His disciples about the end of the age, or the last time of the church. In concluding His predictions about the churchs successive states of Love and faith, He says, Immediately after the misery of those days the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give her light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn; and they will see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a trumpet and a great voice, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the
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other.

(Matthew 24:29-31.)

People who take these words literally can only believe that all these things are going to happen literally, just as described, in some final time called the Last Judgment. That is, the sun and moon will become dark, the stars will fall from heaven, the sign of the Lord will appear in heaven, and He Himself will appear in the clouds, along with the angels with trumpets. Beyond this even, according to predictions elsewhere, they believe the whole visible world is going to perish, and then a new heaven and a new earth will emerge. There are many people in the church today who think this way. Hut such people do not know the arcana1 underlying the very details of the Word. For in the very details of the Word there is an inner meaning, one that deals not with Arcana (sg. arcanum), things which lie hidden. natural, earthly matters like those in the literal sense, but with spiritual and heavenly matters. This holds true not just for groups of words, but even for each single word. For the Word was composed using pure correspondences for the very purpose of having an inner meaning in every detail. The nature of this meaning can be ascertained from all the statements and explanations of it in Arcana Coelestia. A collection of these may be found in the exegesis of The White Horse described in Revelation. This is the sense in which we should understand what the Lord said about His coming in the clouds in the passage cited above. There, the sun which will be darkened refers to the Lord in respect to love, the moon to the Lord in respect to faith. The stars refer to insights of what is good and true (or of love and faith), the sign of the Son of man in heaven to Divine truth becoming visible, and the coming of the Lord in the clouds of heaven with power and glory to His presence in the Word and to revelation. The clouds refer to the literal meaning of the Word, the glory to the Words inner meaning, and the angels with trumpet and loud voice to heaven, where Divine truth comes from. On this basis we can determine what these words of the Lord would have us understand, namely that the Lord is going to open the Word in respect to its inner meaning at the end of the church, when there is no more love and therefore no faith; and that he is going to uncover arcana of heaven. The arcana which are uncovered in the pages that now follow have to do with heaven and hell, and accordingly with mans life after death. Todays churchman knows almost nothing about heaven, hell, or his own life after death, even though this is all described in the Word. It has gone so far that even many people born in the church deny these things and ask in their hearts, Has anyone come back and told us? To prevent so negative an attitude (which is particularly prevalent among people with much worldly wisdom) from infecting and corrupting people of simple heart and simple faith, it has been made possible for me to be right with angels and to talk with them person to person. I have also been allowed to see what heaven is like and then what hell is like; this has been going on for thirteen years. So now I may describe heaven and hell from what I have seen and heard, hoping for the enlightenment of ignorance and the dispersion of disbelief by this means The reason for the occurrence today of such direct revelation is that this is what the Lords coming means. 2. We need first to know who the God of heaven is, since the rest depends on this. Throughout the whole of heaven, no one is recognized as God except the Lord. They say there, just as He Himself taught, that He is one with the Father; that the Father is in Him and He in the
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Father; that anyone who sees Him sees the Father; and that everything holy comes from Him. (John 10:30. 38; 14:9-11; 16:13-15) I have quite often talked with angels about this, and they have invariably said that in heaven they are quite incapable of dividing the Divine in three. This is because they both know and perceive that the Divine is one and is one in the Lord. They have further said that church people coming from the world with the idea of three Divines cannot be let into heaven, since their thought wanders from one to another, and since in heaven they may not think three and say one. This is because everyone in heaven speaks from his thought, for they have thought-speech there, or vocal thought. So there is no possibility of accepting people who in the world divided the Divine in three, adopting a separate idea of each and not unifying and centering their concept in the Lord. Actually, there occurs in heaven a communication of all thoughts, so that if someone were to arrive who thought three and said one, he would be recognized and repelled instantly. However, it is essential to know that people who have not separated what is true from what is good (or faith from love) all accept the heavenly concept of the Lord when they are taught in the other lifethe concept, that is, that the Lord is the God of the universe. It is quite different with people who have separated faith from life, that is, who have not lived by the principles of a true faith. 3. Church people who deny the Lord, recognizing only the Father, and who let themselves harden in this kind of faith, are outside of heaven. And since there occurs among them no inflow from heaven, where only the Lord is worshipped, step by step they lose the ability to think the truth about anything. Eventually they become like mutes or speak sluggishly, and wander about with their arms dangling loose as though they were powerless at the joints. People who deny the Divine side of the Lord and recognize only His Human side, like Socinians, are likewise outside of heaven. They are moved forward a bit toward the right and let down deep, so becoming completely separated from everyone else from Christendom. As for people who claim to believe in an invisible Divine called the Reality of the Universe, the source of all that exists, but who cast aside any belief about the Lord, they are shown to believe in no God at all. This is because an invisible Divine is for them like nature in first principles, which is no fit subject for faith and love because it is no fit subject for thought. They are sent off to be with people called naturalists. www.universe-people.com Things work out differently for people born outside the church, called Gentiles; but more on this below. 4. Little children, who make up a third of heaven, all are led at first into a recognition and belief that the Lord is their own Father, and later into a recognition and belief that He is the Lord of everyone and therefore God of heaven and earth. We will show later that little children mature in heaven, and develop to angelic intelligence and wisdom by means of insights. 5. People from the church should have no uncertainty about the Lords being the God of heaven, since He Himself has taught that everything of the Fathers is His (Matthew 11:27, John 16:25, 17:2) and that He owns all power in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). He said in heaven and on earth because heavens ruler also rules earth, the one being dependent on the other. Ruling heaven and earth means receiving from Him everything good, which is the property of love, and everything true, which is the property of faith. This means all intelligence and wisdom, and therefore all happiness; in a word, it is receiving eternal life.
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The Lord taught this as well when He said, Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; but whoever does not believe in the Son will not see life. (John 3:36) and elsewhere, I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in Me, even though he die, will yet live; and whoever lives and believes in Me shall not die forever. (John 11:25-26) and elsewhere, I am the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6) 6. There are particular spirits who, during their life on earth, had made much of the Father, having no concept of the Lord except as just another man. So they did not believe that He was the God of heaven. Because of this, they were allowed to travel about wherever they wanted and ask whether there was some heaven that did not belong to the Lord. They asked here and there for some days, but they found no such place. They were of the type that thought heavens happiness lay in glory and authority. Since they could not get what they craved and were told that heaven does not consist of things like these, they felt resentful. They wanted a heaven where they could have authority over others and could rival the kind of glory tat exists in the world.

2. THE LORDS DIVINE MAKES HEAVEN

7. The angels collectively are called heaven, since they make it up. But in the last analysis it is the Divine from the Lord, flowing into angels and accepted by them, that makes heaven overall and in every part. The Divine coming from the Lord is the good content of love and the true content of faith. So to the extent that people accept what is good and true from the Lord, they are angels, and are heaven. 8. Absolutely everyone in heaven knows and believes and even perceives that he neither intends nor does anything good nor thinks nor believes anything true on his own, but that his ability comes from the Divine, which means that it is from the Lord. He also sees that anything good or true from himself is not really good or true because it contains no life from the Lord. In fact, the angels of the inmost heaven see this clearly and feel the inflow. To the extent that they accept it, it seems to them that they are in heaven; for the measure of their acceptance is the measure of their involvement in love and faith and in the light of intelligence and wisdom, and the measure of their resultant heavenly joy. Granted, then, that all these things do come from the Lords Divine, and that heaven, for the angels, is within them, it is clearly the Lords Divine that makes heaven, and not the angelsnot by reason of anything that really belongs to them. This is why heaven is called the Lords home and His throne in the Word, and why people in heaven are said to be in the Lord. More will be said below about just how the Divine emanates from the Lord and fills heaven. 9. Because of their wisdom, angels go a step further. Not only, they say, is everything good and true from the Lord, even all of life is from Him. They support this with the principle that nothing can emerge from itself; everything needs some antecedent. So all things emerge from a First, which they call the very Being of all life. Things endure in the same manner, since
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enduring is constant emergence. If anything is not kept in constant connection with the First by means of something in between, it will promptly decay and utterly disintegrate. [2] Further, they say that there is only one fountain of life. Mans life is one of its brooks, which would trickle away if it did not stay constantly supplied from its fountain. Further still, they say that nothing comes from that only fountain of life, the Lord, that is not Divinely good and Divinely true. These influence every particular individual according to the way he accepts them. People who accept them with belief and life find heaven in them. But people who cast them aside or stifle them transform them into hell; for by transforming the good into the evil and the true into the false, they transform life into death. The angels also support the principle that all life is from the Lord as follows: everything in the universe goes back to the good and the true. Mans voluntary lifethe life of his lovegoes back to the good, and mans intellectual lifethe life of his beliefgoes back to the true. So if everything good and true comes from above, so does all of life. [3] Because angels do believe this, they shrug off any expressions of gratitude for good they have done. They are insulted and go away if anyone credits them with goodness. They are amazed that anyone would believe he is wise on his own or does good on his own. They do not call it good when someone does good for his own sake, for this comes from the person himself. They call it good from the Lord when someone does what is good for its own sake. Such good, they say, is what makes heaven, because such good is the Lord. 10. There are spirits who, while they still lived on earth, had convinced themselves that their good deeds and true beliefs came from themselves, or who took credit for them. This is the belief of all people who associate merit with good works and claim righteousness for themselves. They are not accepted in heaven. The angels shun them. They see them as senseless and as thievessenseless because they are always looking at themselves and not at the Divine, and thieves because they steal from the Lord what belongs to Him. Such attitudes go against heavens faith that it is the Lords Divine among the angels that makes heaven. 11. The Lord also teaches that people in heaven and in the church are in Him, and He in them, when He says, Stay in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it stays in the vine, neither can you, unless you stay in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever stays in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you cannot do anything. (John 15:4-5) 12. On this basis we can ascertain that the Lord dwells in what belongs to Him among the angels of heaven. We can also see that the Lord is all there is to heaven, because the good from the Lord is the Lord among the angels. For whatever is from Him is Himself. It is the good from the Lord, then, that is heaven to angels, not anything that belongs to them.

3. THE LORDS DIVINE IN HEAVEN IS LOVE FOR HIM AND CHARITY TOWARD ONES NEIGHBOR
13. In heaven, the Divine that emanates from the Lord is called the Divine-True, for a reason which will be discussed below. This Divine-True flows into heaven from the Lord out of His Divine Love. Divine Love and its resulting Divine-True relate to each other like the suns fire and its resulting light in the world. The love is like the suns fire, and the resulting truth like light from the sun. By reason of this correspondence, then, fire refers to love and light to the truth that
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comes from it. We can determine from this the nature of the Divine-Truth that comes from the Lords Divine Love. Essentially, it is the Divine-Good yoked to the Divine-True. Because it is yoked, it makes all elements of heaven live, just as in this world the suns warmth yoked to its light makes all the elements of the world bear fruit in spring and summertime. It is different when warmth is not yoked to the light, when the light is therefore cold. Then everything is numbed and lies dead. The Divine-Good, which we have compared to warmth, is for angels the good content of love. The Divine-True, which is like light, is the means and source of the good content of that love. 14. The reason the formative Divine in heaven is love, is that love is a spiritual bond. It joins angels to the Lord, and joins them to each other. It actually joins them in a way that makes them a one in the Lords sight. Further, Love is the very Being of everyones life. It is therefore the source of life for angel and man alike. Anybody can know that mans central vitality comes from love if he weighs the facts that loves presence warms him, loves absence chills him, and loves total removal means his death. But he should also realize that everyones love is of the same quality as his life. 15. In heaven, there are two distinct loveslove for the Lord and love toward the neighbor. Love for the Lord dwells in the inmost or third heaven; love toward the neighbor dwells in the second or intermediate heaven. Each comes from the Lord, and each makes a heaven. In heavens open light, the way these two loves differ and the way they connect is clear, but it is quite hard to see this on earth. In heaven, loving the Lord is not understood to mean loving Him in His role, but loving the good that comes from Him. Loving the good means intending and doing what is good, out of love. Loving the neighbor is not understood to mean loving a companion in his role, but loving what is true that comes from the Word. Loving what is true means intending and doing what is true. We can see from this that these loves differ the way the good and true differ, and associate the way the good associates with the true. But this will not fit comfortably into the concepts of a person who does not realize what love, the good, and the neighbor are. 16. I have talked a number of times with angels about this. They were amazed, they said, that church people do not know that loving the Lord and loving the neighbor mean loving what is good and what is true and doing them intentionally. Yet they might well realize that a person shows love by voluntarily doing what someone else wants. So he is loved in return, and becomes yoked to the other. This does not happen by loving someone and not doing what he wants, which intrinsically is not-loving. They might also realize that the good which comes from the Lord is a likeness of Him because He is within it. People are likenesses of Him when they make the good and the true part of their lives by intention and actintending is loving to do. The Lord teaches the truth of this in the Word, saying, Whoever holds my commandments and does them is the one who loves Me; . . . and I will love him, and will make a home with him. (John 14:21, 23) and elsewhere, If you do my commandments, you will stay in my love. (John 15:10, 12) 17. All the evidence in heaven bears witness to the fact that the Divine which emanates from the Lord, influences angels, and makes heaven, is love. All the people who are there are actual models of love and charity. They look bewilderingly beautiful; love radiates from their faces, their speech, and every detail of their lives.
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Further, there are spiritual spheres of life which emanate from each angel and spirit and envelop him. By means of these spheres, one can tell sometimes even at a distance what they are like in affections of love, because these spheres flow out from each individuals life of affection and its resultant thought, or from his loves life and its resultant faith. The spheres projected by angels are so full of love that they move the very depth of life of people about them. They have reached my own perceptions a number of times, and have moved me to these depths. I have also been able to see that love is the source of angels life because in the other life everyone turns in the direction of his love. People who are involved in a love for the Lord and in a love toward the neighbor always turn toward the Lord. People who are, conversely, involved in a love of self always turn away from the Lord. This applies to their every bodily move, for in the other life spatial intervals are arranged according to peoples more inward state. So are their major regions, for they do not have the kind of boundaries we have on earth. Rather, their boundaries depend on the direction people are facing. Actually it is not angels who turn toward the Lord, but the Lord who turns them toward Himself if they love to do things that stem from Him. But this will be further discussed below, in dealing with the major regions in the other life. 18. The reason why the Lords Divine in heaven is love is that love is the vessel of everything heavenlythat is, of peace, intelligence, wisdom, and happiness. For love accepts any and all things suitable to it; it wants them, seeks them out, and soaks them in gladly, so to speak, from a desire constantly to be enriched and fulfilled with them. Man does know this, since his own love, you might say, surveys the contents of his memory and pulls out everything agreeable. It gathers these things and arranges them in and beneath itselfin itself so that they may really belong to it, and beneath itself so that they may be of service to it. But it casts off and banishes other things, which are not agreeable. I have been able to see very clearly indeed, in people who have been raised into heaven, that love has a complete power to accept suitable truths, and has a longing to bond them to itself. Even though such people were of simple mind on earth, they reached angelic wisdom and heavenly happiness when they were among angels. This was because they loved the good and the true for their own sakes, and rooted them in their lives; this is how they were enabled to accept heaven and everything inexpressible there. Conversely, people involved in love of self and the world have no ability to accept these truths; they turn them away, they cast them aside. At their first touch and inflow these people run away and join people in hell who are involved in similar loves. There were some spirits doubtful about loves possession of such characteristics, who wanted to know whether this was true. So with certain hindrances temporarily removed, they were assigned to a state of heavenly love. Then they were brought forward some distance to the location of an angelic heaven. They talked with me from there, saying they had sensed a happiness too inward to render in words, and were severely troubled at the prospect of returning to their former condition. Others too were raised into heaven; and as they were taken further in or up they came into intelligence and wisdom, so that they could grasp things that had been quite beyond them. We can see, then, that love emanating from the Lord is the vessel of heaven and of everything there. 19. The inclusion of all Divine truths in love for the Lord and love toward the neighbor can be supported by what the Lord Himself said about this pair of loves: You shall love... your God with your whole heart and your whole soul. . .: This is the greatest and first commandment; the second, which is similar, is that you love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang the Law and the Prophets.(Matthew 22:37-40)
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The Law and the Prophets are the whole Wordtherefore all Divine Truth.

4. HEAVEN IS DIVIDED INTO TWO KINGDOMS

20. Since there is infinite diversity in heavenno one community or even angel is quite like anotherheaven is divided overall, regionally, and locally. Overall, it is divided into two kingdoms, regionally into three heavens, and locally into countless communities, the details of which will be discussed below. The term kingdoms is used because heaven is called the kingdom of God. 21. Some angels accept the Divine that emanates from the Lord more inwardly, some less inwardly. The ones who accept more inwardly are called celestial [or heavenly] angels; the ones who accept less inwardly are called spiritual angels. On this basis heaven is divided into two kingdoms, one called the celestial kingdom and one called the spiritual kingdom. 22. Since the angels who make up the celestial kingdom accept the Lords Divine more inwardly, they are called more inward angels and also higher angels. So the heavens they make up are called the more inward and higher heavens. The reason for speaking of them as higher and lower is that more inward and more outward things are given these names. 23. The love the inhabitants of the celestial kingdom are involved in is called celestial love; the love the inhabitants of the spiritual kingdom are involved in is called spiritual love. Celestial love is love for the Lord; and spiritual love is charity toward the neighbor. Further, since everything good is a matter of love (for what a person loves is, to him, good), the good of the first kingdom is called celestial and the good of the other spiritual. This enables us to see just how these two kingdoms are differentiated obviously, in the same way as the good quality of love for the Lord is differentiated from the good quality of charity toward the neighbor. Since the former good is a more inward one and the former love is a more inward one, celestial angels are more inward angels, and are called higher. 24. Further still, the celestial kingdom is called the Lords priestly kingdomin the Word, His dwelling; while the spiritual kingdom is called His royal kingdomin the Word, His throne. Also, the Lord on earth was called Jesus from His celestial Divine and the Christ from His spiritual Divine. 25. The angels in the Lords celestial kingdom are vastly superior in wisdom and glory to the angels in the spiritual kingdom. This is because they accept the Lords Divine more inwardly and are involved in a love for Him, and are therefore nearer Him and more closely joined to Him. These angels are like this because they did and do accept Divine truths directly into life, not, like the spiritual ones, by the route of memory and thinking. Accordingly they have such truths written in their hearts; they grasp them and virtually see them in themselves. They do no calculating about them, as to whether they are true or not. They are the kind of people described in Jeremiah: I will put my law in their mind, and will write it in their heart. No longer will anyone teach his friend or brother saying, know Jehovah; . . . they will know me. from the least of them to the
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greatest of them. (Jeremiah 31:33-34) In Isaiah (54:13) they are called taught by Jehovah. The Lord Himself teaches in John (6:45-46) that the people taught by Jehovah are the ones taught by the Lord. 26. It has been stated above that they have more wisdom and glory than others because they did and do accept Divine truths directly into life. The moment they hear them, they intend and do them. They do not store them up in memory and then ponder whether they are true. Angels like this know instantly, by an inflow from the Lord, whether the truth they hear is true. The Lord actually flows directly into a persons intending and indirectly, through his intending, into his thinking. In other words, the Lord flows directly into what is good, and indirectly, through what is good, into what is true. For the term good applies to what belongs to the intention and its consequent acting, while the term true applies to what belongs to the memory and its consequent thinking. In addition, everything true is converted to something good and rooted in love as soon as it enters the intention. But as long as something true is in the memory and consequent thought, it does not become good; it does not live, nor is it adopted by the individual. For a person is a person by virtue of his intention and his resulting understanding, not from understanding apart from intention. 27. Since this distinction exists between angels of the celestial kingdom and angels of the spiritual kingdom, they do not live together or socialize with each other. There occurs only some communication through intermediate angelic communities called celestial-spiritual. It is through these that the celestial kingdom flows into the spiritual. This is how heaven makes a one even though it is divided into two kingdoms. The Lord always furnishes intermediate angels of this sort, as agents of communication and connection. 28. For now, we ignore the details, since in much of what follows we will be discussing the angels of one kingdom or the other.

5. THERE ARE THREE HEAVENS

29. There are three heavens quite distinct from each otheran inmost or third heaven, an intermediate or second, and an outmost or first. They follow each other and are interdependentjust like the top of a person, called his head, his middle or body, and his extremities or feetor like the top, middle, and bottom of a house. The Divine that comes forth and down from the Lord is similar in design, so by requirement of design, heaven has three parts. 30. The more inward reaches of a person, too, the regions of his inner and outer mind, are arranged in a similar design. He has an inmost, an intermediate, and an extremity, because when he was created the whole Divine design was transcribed into him. Indeed he was fashioned as a Divine design in a form, and was therefore fashioned as a heaven in its smallest image. As a result, the individual is in touch with the heavens as far as his more inward reaches are concerned. He arrives among angels, too, after deathangels of the inmost or intermediate or
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outmost heaven depending on his own acceptance of what is Divinely good and true from the Lord during his life on earth. 31. The Divine which flows in from the Lord and is accepted in the third or inmost heaven is called celestial, so the angels there are called celestial angels. The Divine which flows in from the Lord and is accepted in the second or intermediate heaven is called spiritual, so the angels there are called spiritual angels. But the Divine which flows in from the Lord and is accepted in the outmost or first heaven is called natural. However, since the naturalness of that heaven-unlike the naturalness of the worldcontains something spiritual and celestial, the heaven is called celestial-natural and spiritual-natural, and so are its angels. The ones who accept an inflow from the intermediate or second heaven (the spiritual heaven) are called spiritual-natural, and the ones who accept an inflow from the third or inmost heaven (the celestial heaven) are called celestial-natural. Spiritual-natural and celestial-natural angels are distinguishable, but they make one unbroken heaven because they are on one distinct level. 32. There is an inner and an outer to each heaven. People in the inner are called inner angels, and people in the outer are called outer angels. The outer and the inner in the heavensin each heaven, that isare arranged like the capacity to intend and its capacity to discern in man. The inner is like the capacity to intend; the outer is like its capacity to discern. Every capacity to intend has its own capacity to discern. One without the other is impossible. The capacity to intend is like a flame, and the capacity to discern like the light that comes from it. 33. It is worth realizing fully that the more inward elements of angels determine which heaven they will be in. As more inward elements are more open to the Lord, they are in a more inward heaven. There are three levels of the more inward elements of everyone, angel, spirit, or man. People whose third level has been opened are in the inmost heaven; people whose second, or just whose first has been opened, are in the intermediate heaven or the outmost one. These more inward elements get opened by the acceptance of what is Divinely good and Divinely true. People who are moved by Divine truths and let them right into life (that is, into intention and action) are in the inmost or third heaven, located there according to their acceptance of the good as a result of their affection for the true. Others, who do not let these truths right into life, let them instead into their memory and consequent understanding, and from there intend and do them. They are in the intermediate or second heaven. Then there are people who live upright lives and believe in a Divine Being, but do not much care about learning. They are in the outmost or first heaven. This enables us to conclude that the states of the more inward elements make heaven, heaven being within everyone and not outside him. This is what the Lord is teaching when He says, The kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will people say, look, here it is or look, there it is. Lookyou have the kingdom of God within you. (Luke 17:20-21) 34. All perfection increases as one moves inward and decreases as one moves outward. For more inward things are nearer the Divine and are intrinsically more pure, while more outward things are farther from the Divine and intrinsically more crude. Angelic perfection lies in intelligence, wisdom, lovein everything good and every resultant happiness. It does not lie in happiness alone, for happiness without the rest is superficial, not inward. Since for angels of the inmost heaven the more inward elements are opened on the third level, their perfection vastly exceeds the perfection of angels in the intermediate heaven, whose
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more inward elements are opened on the second level. The perfection of angels of the intermediate heaven exceeds the perfection of angels in the outmost heaven to a similar degree. 35. This distinctiveness means that an angel of one heaven cannot have access to angels of another heaven. That is, no one from a lower heaven can ascend, and no one from a higher heaven can descend. Anyone who ascends from a lower heaven is gripped by a tension to the point of pain. He cannot see people there, much less talk with them. And anyone who descends from a higher heaven loses his wisdom, stammers, and falls prey to despair. There were some people from the outmost heaven who had not yet been taught that heaven is made up of angels more inward elements, who believed they could reach a higher heavenly happiness if only they reached those angels heaven. They were granted access to them; but while they were there, even though there was a great throng, wherever they looked they saw no one. As outsiders, their more inward reaches were not open to the same level as those of the angels who lived there, and consequently neither was their sight. Shortly, they were gripped by heart pains so severe that they hardly knew whether they were alive or not. On account of this, they abruptly transferred themselves back to the heaven they came from, delighted to get back among their own folk and vowing never again to long for anything higher than what suited their own life. I have also seen some people lowered from a higher heaven, so losing their wisdom that they even forgot what their own heaven was like. But when (as often happens) the Lord raises people from a lower heaven to a higher one to see the glory there, it is different. In such cases they are prepared first, and they are attended by mediating angels who serve as agents of communication. We can see from this that these three heavens are quite distinct from each other. 36. People in the same heaven can associate with anyone there. Still, the pleasures of associating vary depending on the likeness of the kinds of good they are involved in; but more on this in subsequent sections. 37. However, even though the heavens are so different that the angels of one cannot share fellowship with angels of another, still the Lord joins all the heavens together by means of a direct and an indrect flow. The direct inflow is from Himself into all the heavens, and the indirect is from one heaven into another. In this way, He makes the three heavens one, so bound together from the first to the outmost that nothing unconnected exists. Anything that is not tied in with the first by something in between does not endure, but disintegrates and becomes nothing. 38. No one can grasp how the heavens are divided, or even what the inner and outer person are, if he does not know the arrangement of the Divine design in levels. The only idea many people in this world have about inner and outer or higher and lower levels, is a rough idea of something uninterrupted, or something that goes along without a break from purer to more crude. But inner and outer things are arranged as distinct, not as continuous. Levels are of two kinds. There are continuous levels and noncontinuous levels. With continuous levels, it is like the lessening of light from blazing to dark, or the lessening of sight from things in the light to things in the shade, or like levels of air purity from bottom to top. These levels are assigned spatial units. [2] Levels which are not continuous, but are distinct, are marked off rather as leading and following, like cause and effect or like producer and product. Anyone who looks carefully will see that there are these levels in every single thing in the whole world, levels of production and composition with one thing obviously resulting from another, a third from that, and so on and on. [3] The person who does not get a good grasp of these levels has no way of knowing the
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distinctions between the heavens, between mans inner and outer powers, between the spiritual world and the natural world, or between mans spirit and his body. As a result, he cannot understand the nature or the source of correspondences and representations or the nature of inflow. Sense-oriented people do not grasp these distinctions. They take them to be matters of rising and falling on the pattern of continuous levels. Consequently, they have no way of visualizing the spiritual except as a kind of purer natural. So they stay outside, a long, long way from understanding. 39. Lastly, let me mention a particular arcanum about the angels of the three heavens. This is something that has not occurred to anyone before, because no one has yet understood levels. It is this: every single angel and every single person has an inmost or highest level, or something inmost and highest, where the Lords Divine flows in first or most directly. From this center the Lord arranges other relatively inward elements that, according to levels of their inward design, follow in sequence. We may call this inmost or highest level the Lords entryway to angel and man, His very home within them. It is by this something inmost or highest that man is man and is differentiated from nonrational animals, since they do not possess it. This is why man, unlike animals, can as to his more inward reaches or what belongs to his inner and outer mind, be raised by the Lord toward Himself. Man can believe in Him, be moved by love for Him, and so can see Him. As a result also, man can accept intelligence and wisdom and can talk from rational processes. This is also the source of mans living to eternity. But it does not come openly to the attention of any angel just what the Lord arranges and takes care of at his center, since this is above his thought and beyond his wisdom. 40. These, then, are some general features of the three heavens. There is more to be said later about each heaven in particular.

6. THE HEAVENS ARE MADE UP OF COUNTLESS COMMUNITIES

41. The angels of any particular heaven are not all together in the same place, but are divided into larger and smaller communities. This is done according to the variations of the good outcome of the love and faith they are involved in. People involved in similar good form a single community. Types of the good occur in heaven in infinite variety, and each single angel is his own good, so to speak. 42. Further, the distances between angelic communities in the heavens are like the general and specific differences between types of the good. For in the spiritual world, the only source of distances is the varieties of the states of the more inward elementsin heaven therefore varieties on the states of love. People who differ greatly are far apart; people who differ slightly are not far apart; and likeness brings unity. 43. Within a given community, all the individuals are distinguished from each other in a similar way. The more perfect ones are in the central regionthat is, those who are outstanding in goodness and thus in love, wisdom, and discernment. The less outstanding ones are around the
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outside, at distances proportional to lessening levels of perfection. It is arranged the way light decreases from a center toward the periphery. The people at the center are in the greatest light, those toward the fringes progressively in less. 44. People are borne by their own natures, as it were, toward those who are like them. With people like them selves, they feel as though they were with their own family, as though they were at home; while with others they feel as though they were with foreigners, as though they were abroad. When they are with people like themselves, they are in their free condition, and as a result are involved in everything that is pleasant about life. 45. We can see from this that the good joins all people together in the heavens and that they are distinguished by its quality. Still, it is not the angels who do this joiningit is the Lord, the source of the good. He Himself leads them, attaches them, distinguishes them, and keeps them in a free condition to the extent that they are involved in something good. In this way He keeps each one involved in the life of his love, his faith, his discernment and wisdom, and therefore in happiness. 46. Further, the very same way people on earth recognize their family members, relatives, and friends, all angels involved in like good recognize each other, even though they may never have seen each other before. This is because there are no kinds of family or relationship or friendship in the other life except spiritual ones, that is, ones that belong to love and faith. I could see this a number of times when I was in the spirit, taken out of the body and therefore into fellowship with angels. At such times I seemed to have known some of them from infancy, while others I seemed not to have known at all. The ones I seemed to have known from infancy were the ones in a state like that of my own spirit; the unknown ones were in an unlike state. 47. Facially, the people who make up a single angelic community all look alike in general, but not in details. One can get some idea of this resemblance in general and variety in detail from things in this world, such as the following: we realize that every nationality has a certain general likeness about the face and eyes by which one can recognize it and tell it from a different nationality. This is even more true of telling one family from another. But it is far more complete in the heavens because there, all the more inward affections are visible and radiate from a persons face, faces there being the very outward form and picture of these affections. In heaven, there is no way to have a face different from ones affections. As a demonstration of the way this general resemblance is varied in detail in the individuals of a single community, there was a face like an angels that appeared to me. This was varied according to affections from the good and the true such as occur within members of a single community. These variations lasted quite a while; and I noticed that the same general face stayed all the way through like a background, and that the other appearances were simple offshoots or developments from it. So there were shown through this face the affections of the whole community, the sources of the differences in looks of the people there. For as already stated, angelic faces are forms of their more inward elements, and therefore forms of the affections that belong to love and faith. 48. As a further result, an angel of outstanding wisdom sees instantly what another angel is like from his face. It is impossible there for anyone to conceal what lies within him with his expression and to pretend, and quite impossible to lie or to take someone in by cleverness and hypocrisy. It does sometimes happen that hypocrites sneak into some communities, hypocrites trained to conceal what lies within them and to arrange their outward appearance to resemble the
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particular good the members of that community are involved into disguise themselves as angels of light. But they cannot stay around very long, because they begin to feel pain inside, to feel tortured, to turn blue in the face, and almost to die. These changes stem from their incompatibility with the life that is flowing in and working. So they suddenly dive back into the hell where people of their sort live, and are not eager to climb up again. These are the ones meant by the man who was discovered among the diners and guests, who did not have on a wedding garment and who was thrown out into the darkness (Matthew 22:llff). 49. All the communities of heaven are in touch with each other, but not through an open interchange, since few people go from their own community to another. For leaving a community is like leaving oneself or ones life and moving to another one that does not fit in the same way. Instead, they are all in touch through the outreach of spheres that come from each ones life. A lifes sphere is a sphere that belongs to affections of love and faith. It spreads out into surrounding communities far and widefarther and wider as the affections are more inward and perfect. Angels have discernment and wisdom proportional to this outreach. People in the inmost heaven, particularly the ones at its center, have an outreach into the whole heaven. This results in a communication of everyone in heaven with each individual, and of each individual with everyone. But this outreach needs to be dealt with more fully below in connection with a treatment of the heavenly form that determines the arrangement of the heavenly form that determines the arrangement of angelic communities (it will also come up in connection with the Wisdom and Discernment of Angels), since the whole outreach of affections and thoughts moves according to this form. 50. It was stated above that there are larger and smaller communities in the heavens. The larger ones are made up of tens of thousands of people, the smaller ones of thousands, and the smallest of several hundred. There are also some people who live apart, home by home, so to speak, and family by family. Spread out as they are, they are still arranged like the people in communities. That is, the wisest of them are in the center, and the simpler toward the borders. These people are more closely under the Lords Divine guidance, and are the best of angels.

7. EACHCOMMUNITYIS A HEAVENNA SMALLER FORM, AND EACH ANGEL A HEAVEN IN THE SMALLEST FORM.
51. The reason each community is a heaven in a smaller form, and each angel a heaven in the smallest form, is that the good outcome of love and faith is what makes heaven, and because this good is within every community of heaven and within every angel of a community. Regardless of the fact that this good is everywhere diverse and varied, it is still the good of heaven. The difference is just that heaven is of one kind in one place and of another kind in another place. So a person raised into a community of heaven is described as having come into heaven, and the people there are described as being in heaven, each in his own. Everyone who is in the other life is familiar with this. So people located outside a heaven or below it, when they see a group of angels from a distance, say that heaven is there - and also over there. It is rather like
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the situation of governors, officials, and administrators in a single royal palace or court. Even though they live apart from each other in their own houses, or each in his own apartment, one higher and one lower, they are nevertheless in a single palace or court, with each one being involved in his own particular function in the kings service. www.universe-people.com This clarifies what is meant by the Lords statement that in his Fathers house are many mansions (John 14:2), and by the dwellings of heaven and the heavens of heaven in the Prophets. 52. I have been able to find confirmation for the proposition that each community is a heaven in smaller form in this: there is in any particular community a heavenly form or pattern which is like the pattern of the whole heaven. In the middle of the whole heaven live those who stand out above the rest. Round about, all the way to the boundaries, live the ones who are less outstanding, in ever diminishing series (see the statement in the preceding chapter, n. 43). There is additional confirmation in the fact that the Lord guides all the people who are in the whole heaven as though they were a single angel. He does the same with those in each community. From time to time, therefore, a whole angelic community may appear as a unit in the form of an angel, a sight which the Lord has in fact let me see. Further, when the Lord appears in the midst of angels, He does not seem to be attended by a throng, but as one Person in an angelic form. This is why in the Word the Lord is called an angel, as also is a whole community. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are nothing but angelic communities, given their names by reason of their functions. 53. Just as a whole community is a heaven in smaller form, an angel is a heaven in the smallest form. For heaven is not outside an angel, but within him. Actually, his more inward elements, which belong to his mind, are arranged in the form of heaven precisely so that they can accept all the elements of heaven that are outside him. These the angel accepts according to the quality of the good that is in him from the Lord. So an angel, too, is a heaven. 54. There is no real point in saying that heaven is outside anyoneit is within him. For every angel accepts the heaven outside himself which accords with the heaven inside himself. So we can see how mistaken a person is if he believes that getting into heaven means simply being raised up among angels, no matte? what he is like in regard to his more inward life-that heaven, then, is granted to people by direct mercy. For quite the contrary, unless heaven is in a person, nothing of the heaven outside flows in and is accepted. There are many spirits who hold this opinion. Because of their belief therefore, they have been brought up into heaven. But once there, on account of the opposition of their inner life to the life the angels are involved in, they began to lose their intellectual sight until they became like fools. Emotionally, they were tormented to the point that they carried on like madmen. In short, people who live badly and come into heaven gasp for breath and writhe like fish out of water, in the air, or like animals in a vacuum chamber, with only the ether left once the air has been extracted. This may serve to demonstrate that heaven is within a person and not outside him. 55. Since all people accept the heaven outside them in accordance with the quality of the heaven within them, they accept the Lord in the same way; for the Lords Divine is what makes heaven. This is why the Lord, when He presents Himself in a particular community, takes on an appearance that accords with the quality of the good which that community is involved in. So He does not look the same in one community as in another. Not that this difference is in the Lord-it is in the people who see Him from their own good and therefore according to it. They are moved by the sight of Him according to the quality of their love. People who love Him deeply are
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deeply moved; people who love Him less are less moved. Evil people, who are outside heaven, are tormented by His presence. When the Lord appears in a particular community, He takes on the appearance of an angel, but He is distinguished from the others by the Divine which shines through. 56. Further, heaven is where the Lord is recognized, believed, and loved. The diversity of His worship, arising out of the diversity of the good from one community to another, does not do any damage, but rather works to advantage, since it is a source of heavens perfection. It is hard to get across this factthat this is a source of heavens perfectionwithout marshaling up tried and true maxims from the world of learning and setting forth with them how a ones which is complete is formed from differing elements. Every one comes into being from differing elements, for a one which is not from differing elements is not really anything. It has no form, and therefore no quality. But given a one that does come into being from differing elements, which each perfectly formed element in proper turn joining another like a congenial friend, it does have a perfect quality. Now heaven is a one made up of different elements arranged in the most perfect form, for the heavenly form is of all forms the most perfect. We can see from all beauty, charm, and delight that move the senses and the passions that this is the source of all perfection. These do in fact come into being and flow only from the concord and harmony of many elements which agree and accord, whether manifesting themselves all at once in an orderly arrangement, or following each other in a sequence. This does not happen from a one without many elements. So it is said that variety is pleasing; and its attraction is known to be in proportion to its quality. This offers a kind of mirror-view of how perfection results from differing elements, even in heaven. For the things that happen in the material world do offer a kind of mirror-view of things in the spiritual world. 57. Much the same can be said about the church as has been said about heaven, since the church is the Lords heaven on earth. There are many of these, too, each one called a church; and each one is a church to the extent that the good outcome of love and faith does the governing within it. Here again, the Lord makes a one out of different elementsone church out of many. Much the same can also be said about the churchman in specific as has been said about the church in general. It can be said that the church is within the individual and not outside him, and that any person at all is a church in whom the Lord is effectively present in the good outcome of love and faith. Even the statements about an angel with heaven within him can be virtually repeated about a person with the church within him. We can say that he is a church in its smallest form in the same way that an angel is a heaven in its smallest form; and even more, we can say that a person with the church within him is a heaven just as an angel is. People, after all, are created to enter heaven and become angels. So the person who possesses what is good from the Lord is an angel-man. It may be worth noting what man has in common with angels, and what he has besides. In common with angels, mans more inward elements are patterned after heaven and he becomes a true likeness of heaven to the extent that he is involved in the good of love and faith. Besides what the angel has, man has the formation of his more outward elements on the pattern of this world, and also the subordination and service of this world of his to heaven so far as he is involved in what is good. Then he has also the Lords effective presence with him on both levels, just as if he were in his heaven. In fact, the Lord is in His Divine order on both levels, for God is order.
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58. Lastly, it is worth noting that the person who has heaven in himself has heaven not only in the major or general aspects of himself, but even in his smallest and most particular aspects. Also, the smallest aspects reflect an image of the largest. This stems from the fact that each individual is his own love, that his actual quality is determined by his ruling love. Whatever rules in a person flows into his particular aspects, arranges them, and introduces its own likeness everywhere. Love for the Lord is what rules in heaven, because there the Lord is loved more than everything. As a result, the Lord is there the all in all, flows into each and all things, arranges them, clothes them with His own likeness, and so works things out that it is heaven where He is. An angel, then, is a heaven in its smallest form, a community is the same in a larger form, and all the communities taken together are the same in largest form. On the Lords Divine constituting heaven and His being the all in all, (see above, nn. 7-12).

8. HEAVEN, IF GRASPED AS A SINGLE ENTITY, REFLECTS A SINGLE PERSON

59. It is an arcanum still unknown in the world that heaven reflects a single person if it is grasped as a single entity, but in the heavens this is common knowledge. Knowing this even as to specifics and details is a specialty of the understanding of angels there. Many things follow from it, things which cannot be crisply and clearly conceptualized without this as their pervasive first principle. Since angels know that all the heavens, including all their communities, reflect a single person, they actually call heaven the Greatest and Divine Man. The term Divine is used because the Lords Divine makes heaven (see above, nn. 7-12). 60. People without a proper idea of spiritual and celestial things cannot grasp the arrangement and connection of spiritual and celestial things in this pattern and likeness. They think that earthly, material elements, the ingredients of the lowest level of a person, really constitute him, that without these elements a person would not be a person. They should however realize that a person is not a person by virtue of these elements, but by virtue of his ability to discern what is true and to intend what is good. These are the spiritual and celestial elements that constitute a person. People do after all know that a persons quality is the quality of his discernment and his intention. We can also recognize that a persons earthly body has been constructed to work for these inner powers in the world, and appropriately to do useful tasks for him in the outmost sphere of nature. So the body does not start anything on its ownit is rather started up, quite compliant to the promptings of discernment and intention. It even follows that what a person thinks, he speaks with his tongue and mouth, that what he intends, he does with his body and limbs; so that discernment and intention are the doers, while the body by itself is not so at all. We can then see that abilities to discern and intend make a person human. And they are in a form like his, since they do initiate action in the minutest parts of his body, like an inside within an outside. It is on their account, then, that man is called internal and spiritual. Heaven is such a person in the greatest and most complete form. 61. This is the kind of idea angels have of man. Under no circumstances do they watch what a person is doing with his body. Instead, they watch the intention from which the body is behaving.
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They call this the real personthis and such discernment as is in unison with the intention. 62. Actually, angels do not see heaven as a single whole in a form like this, for the totality of heaven does not come under any single angels view. From time to time, though, they do see outlying communities made up of many thousand angels, as one and as in this form. From a community as a sample, they infer what heaven is overall. For in the most perfect form, the greater units are arranged like the smaller sections, and the sections like the greater units. The difference, simply, is like the difference between larger and smaller instances of similar things. So they say that the whole heaven is like this in the Lords view, because the Divine sees everything from the very center and highest point. 63. Heaven being like this, it is governed by the Lord as though it were one personlike a unit therefore. True, a person is made up of countless different components, both overall and in his parts. Overall, he is made up of members, organs, and viscera, secondarily of chains of fibers, nerves, and blood vesselsof members within members, then, and of parts within parts. Still when a person acts, he acts as a unit. Heaven is like this, under the Lords authority and guidance. 64. The reason so many different things in man act as a unit is that there is not a single thing involved that does not do something for the larger whole and fulfill a function. The whole fulfills a function for its parts and the parts fulfill functions for the whole. For the whole comprises parts, and the parts constitute the whole. So they take care for each other, keep each other in view, and are assembled into the kind of form in which each and every element reflects the whole and its good. This is the reason they act as a unit. [2] Groups in the heavens are like this. People there are bound together in this kind of form according to their useful functions. So people who do not fulfill some function for the community are thrown out of heaven because their nature is different. Fulfilling a useful function is intending well toward others for the sake of the common good. Not fulfilling a useful function is intending well toward others not for the sake of the common good, but for ones own sake. People who love themselves supremely fall in the latter category; people who love the Lord supremely fall in the former. This is why the people in heaven act as a unitnot from themselves, but from the Lord. They view Him, in fact, as the only Source; they view His kingdom as the larger whole to which they must attend. This is the intent of the Lords words, Seek the kingdom of God first, and its righteousness, and everything will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33). Seeking its righteousness is seeking its good. [3] People on earth who love their countrys good more than their own, and their neighbors good as much as their own, are the ones who in the other life love and seek the Lords kingdom. For there the Lords kingdom takes the place of the nation. And people who like to do good for others not for their own sakes but for the sake of the good, are the ones who love the neighbor, for the good is the neighbor. All people of this quality are in the Greatest Manthat is, in heaven. 65. Since the whole heaven does reflect a single person, even being the Divine Spiritual Person in greatest form (even in shape), heaven is divided into members and parts the way a person is, and these parts have similar names. Angels actually know what member one community or another is in. They say that this community is in some member or district of the head, that one in some member or district of the chest, that one in some member or district of the loins, and so on.
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In general, the highest or third heaven makes up the head as far as the neck, the middle or second heaven the torso as far as the loins or knees. The lowest or first heaven makes up the feet right to the soles and also the arms right to the fingers. For despite being at the sides, the arms and hands are lowest things of people. All this again shows why there are three heavens. 66. Spirits who are below heaven are utterly amazed when they hear and see that heaven is underneath as well as above. They have actually the same belief and notion as people in the world, that heaven is overhead only. They do not really know that arrangement of the heavens is like the arrangement of the members and organs and viscera in a person, with some higher up and some lower down. Nor do they realize that it is like the arrangement of the parts within each member or organ or viscus, with some inside and some outside. As a result, they are confused about heaven. 67. This material about heaven as the Greatest Man has been brought in because without an introductory awareness of it, there is no way of grasping things yet to be said about heaven. There is no possibility of having a clear concept of heavens form, of the Lords bond with heaven, of heavens bond with the individual, of the inflow of the spiritual world into the natural, no possibility whatsoever of a clear concept of correspondences, which we must discuss below in their proper place. So the material above has been prefaced in order to shed light on these matters.

9. EACH COMMUNITY IN THE HEAVENS REFLECTS A SINGLE PERSON

68. A number of times, I have been given to see that each community of heaven reflects a single person, and is in the likeness of a person. There was a community infiltrated by a number of people who knew how to put on the guise of angels of lighthypocrites. As they were weeded out from the angels, the entire community looked first like a hazy unit, then gradually took a human form rather vaguely, and finally in full light looked like a person. The people in that person, making it up, were the ones who were involved in the good of that community. The other ones, not in the person or making it up, were the hypocrites. The latter were thrown out, the former kept; and so the separation was accomplished. People are hypocrites who speak in a good manner and act well too, but who are looking out for themselves when you get right down to details. They talk like angels about the Lord and heaven and love and the heavenly life, they even act well in order to seem really to be the way they talk. But their thinking is something else. They believe nothing, they intend good to no one but themselves. Whatever good they do is for their own sakes; if it is at all for others, it is for appearances sake and therefore for themselves. 69. The appearance of an entire angelic community as a unit in human form when the Lord makes Himself effectively present, is something I have in fact been given to see. There once appeared, upward and toward the East, something like a bright white cloud taking on a rosy glow, with small stars around it. This cloud descended, and as it did, it gradually brightened until it had a visible, completely human form. The small stars around the cloud were angels, who looked like that because of a light from the Lord. 70. It is most important to realize that, although all the members of a heavenly community look
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like a person when they are seen together as a unit, still one community is not the same kind of person as another. They can be told apart like the faces of members of a family. The reason is the one mentioned above (n. 47), that they differ according to the differences of the good the members are involved in, the good that shapes them. The most perfect and human beautiful form is the one presented by communities in the inmost or highest heaven, particularly those in the center. 71. It is worth noting that the more people there are in a community, and the more they act as one, the more perfect its human form is. For as already explained (n. 56), variety arranged in heavenly form constitutes perfection, and variety occurs when there are many elements. Each heavenly community increases numerically every day. As it increases, it becomes more perfect. It is not just the community whose perfection is advanced in this way, but heaven itself overall, since the communities make up heaven. Seeing that heaven is perfected by increasing numbers, how obviously wrong are people who believe heaven may be closed by being filled to capacity! Actually, it is just the other way aroundit will never be closed, and greater and greater fullness makes it more perfect. So there is nothing angels like better than the arrival of new angel-guests. 72. The appearance of each community in human likeness (seen all together and as a unit) stems from all heavens having this likeness, as was pointed out in the last chapter. In the most perfect form, like the form of heaven, there is a resemblance of the parts to the whole, of the smaller to the largest. Heavens smaller elements, its parts, are the communities of which it is composed (on these being heavens in smaller form, see above, nn. 5 1-58). The constancy of this resemblance stems from the fact that in the heavens everyones good elements come from one love, and therefore from one source. The one love which gives rise to everyones good elements there is love for the Lord, from the Lord. This is why the whole heaven is a likeness of Him in general, each community the same less generally, and each angel the same in particular. The reader may refer to what has already been said on this subject (n. 58).

10. EACH ANGEL IS THEREFORE IN A PERFECT HUMAN FORM

73. We have shown in the last two chapters that heaven, taken as a single whole, reflects a single person, and so does each community in heaven. The reasons there cited converge on the conclusion that every angel also reflects a single person. As heaven is a person in greatest form and a community of heaven is a person in a lesser one, so an angel is a person in least form. For in the most perfect form (which heavens form is), there is a resemblance to the whole in the part, and a resemblance to the part in the whole. The reason for this is that heaven is a commonwealth, actually sharing everything it has with each person there, and each member receives everything he has from the commonwealth. An angel is a recipient entity and therefore a heaven in smallest form, as was explained in its own chapter above. Man too, to the extent that he accepts heaven, is also a recipient entity, a heaven, and an angel (see above, n. 57). In Revelation, this is described as follows: He measured the wall of the holy Jerusalem, a hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of
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a manthat is, of the angel.

(Revelation 21:17)

Here Jerusalem is the Lords church, and in a more important sense, heaven. The wall is the truth which protects against the assault of false and evil elements. A hundred and forty-four is everything good and true taken together. The measure is its quality; a man is one who has within him all these elements in general and individuallyone who therefore has heaven within; and since an angel is a person by virtue of the elements mentioned, the passage reads, the measure of a manthat is, of the angel. This is the spiritual meaning of the words. Without this meaning, who would discern that the wall of the holy Jerusalem is the measure of a manthat is, of the angel? 74. Now on to some evidence. As for angels being human forms, or people, this I have seen thousands of times. I have actually talked with them person to person, sometimes with one, sometimes with several in a group, without seeing anything about their form to distinguish them from man. From time to time I have marvelled at their being the way they are; and to forestall any claim that this is delusion or hallucination, I have been allowed to see them while I was fully awake, that is, while I was aware with all my physical senses and in a state of clear perception. I have often told angels how people in Christendom are in such blind ignorance about angels and spirits that they believe them to be minds without form, or nothing but thoughts, which could not be conceptualized except the way one might conceptualize an ether containing something living. And since they predicate of angels nothing human but thought, they believe they cannot see because they have no eyes, cannot hear because they have no ears, and cannot talk because they have no mouth or tongue. [2] The response of angels has been that they know that many people on earth hold this kind of belief, and that it is prevalent among intellectuals andwhich surprises themthe clergy. In fact, they say the reason is that intellectuals, the vanguard, the first to rule,out any real concept of angels and spirits, have done their thinking on these matters on the basis of sensory data proper to the outer person. If people think on this basis and not from an inner light or the universally inborn general concept, all they can do is form notions like these. For the outer persons sensory organs receive material only from the realm of nature. They receive nothing higher, and therefore nothing about the spiritual world. A false kind of thought about angels branches out from this vanguard, these people who serve as leaders, to others who do not think for themselves but rather follow their leaders. Anyone who begins by thinking like someone else and making up his mind, and only later looks at things with his own intelligence, has a hard time changing his mind. So most of them are content to reinforce their borrowed opinions. [3] The angels went on to say that people of simple faith and heart are not caught up in this concept of angels. They are involved rather in an idea of angels as being rather like people of heaventhis because they have not let erudition extinguish something planted in them from heaven, and do not recognize anything that has no form. This is why the angels carved or painted in churches are invariably represented as people. On the subject of this something plapted in them from heaven, angels identified it as the Divine flowing in and working in people involved in the good of faith and life. 75. On the basis of all my experience, covering to date many years, I can say, I can insist that angels are completely people in form. They do have faces, eyes, ears, chests, arms, hands, and feet. They do see each other, hear each other, and talk with each other. In short, nothing proper to man whatever is missing, except that they are not clothed with a material body. I have seen them in their own light, many times brighter than earths noon, and everything about their faces was crisper and clearer in that light than the faces of people on earth appear. I
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have even been given to see an angel of the inmost heaven. He had a more brilliant and radiant face than the angels of lower heavens. I looked at him carefully, and he had a human form in all perfection. 76. It should however be noted that angels are not visible to men through mens physical senses, only rather through the eyes of the spirit within man. For this is in the spiritual world, while everything physical is in the natural world. Like sees like because it is made of like material. Further, the bodys organ of sight, the eye, is so crude that it cannot even see the smaller elements of nature except through a lens, as everyone knows. So it is still less able to see things above the realm of nature like the things in the spiritual world. However, these things are visible to man when he is withdrawn from physical sight and his spirits sight is opened. This happens in a moment if it is the Lords good pleasure that they be visible. At such times, it seems to the person exactly as though he were seeing these things with his physical eyes. This is also the way Abraham, Lot, Manoah, and the Prophets saw angels; this is the way the Lords disciples saw Him after the Resurrection. It is how I have seen angels. Because the prophets saw in this manner they were called seers and people whose eyes were opened (I Samuel 9:9, Numbers 24:3). Bringing about such sight is called opening the eyes, as happened to Elishas servant, of whom we read, In prayer, Elisha said, Jehovah, open his eyes, please, so that he may see. And once Jehovah had opened the servants eyes, he saw that behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire roundabout Elisha.(II Kings 6:17) 77. Some honest spirits I talked with on this subject were heartsick at the existence of this kind of ignorance in the church about the condition of heaven and about spirits and angels. They maintained indignantly that I ought to go right back with the message that they were not formless minds, not ethereal gases, but people to a T, that they could see and hear and feel just as well as people on earth.

11. HEAVEN AS A WHOLE AND IN ITS PARTS REFLECTS A PERSON BECAUSE IT STEMS FROM THE LORDS DIVINE HUMAN
78. It follows as a conclusion from what has been said and explained in the foregoing chapters, that heaven as a whole and in its parts reflects a person because it stems from the Lords Divine Human. In the foregoing chapters, we have pointed out the following: I. the Lord is the God of heaven; II. the Lords Divine makes heaven; Ill. Heaven is made up of countless communities, each community being a heaven in lesser form and each angel a heaven in least form; IV. the whole heaven, taken as one whole, reflects a single person; V. each community in the heavens reflects a single person; VI. each angel is therefore in a perfect human form. All these propositions lead to the conclusion that the Divine, since it does makes heaven, is Human in form. The identity of this with the Lords Divine Human can be seen more clearly from propositions extracted and assembled from the Arcana Coelestia (cf. Appendix 1), since these are condensed. One can see from these selections that the Lords Human is Divine, and notas
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is believed within the churchthat His Human is not Divine. This can also be seen from The Doctrine of the Holy Jerusalem toward the tnd, where it deals with the Lord. 79. A great deal of evidence has demonstrated the truth of this to me; some will be cited in what immediately follows. All the angels in heaven see the Divine in Human form exclusively. Remarkably, people in the higher heavens cannot think about the Divine in any other way. They are guided into this unavoidable way of thinking both by the Divine itself which flows into them and by the form of heaven according to which their thoughts reach out about them. For every thought angels have has an outreach into heaven, and they have discernment and wisdom proportional to that outreach. This is why everyone there acknowledges the Lord, inasmuch as the Divine Human exists only in Him. This is not just something told me by angels. It is something I have been given to perceive when raised into a more inward sphere of heaven. We can then see that the wiser angels are, the more clearly they perceive this. This is also why the Lord appears to them. The Lord actually appears in a Divine Angelic formwhich is a human formto people who acknowledge and believe in a visible Divine, but not to people who believe in an invisible Divine. The former have the ability to see their Divine; the latter do not. 80. Because angels do not perceive an invisible Divine (which they call a formless Divine), but perceive a visible Divine in human form, it is natural for them to say that the Lord alone is Person, and that they themselves are people by reason of Himalso that each of them is a person to the extent that he accepts the Lord. They.understand accepting the Lord to mean accepting the good and the true that come from Him, because the Lord is within His good and within his true. This they call wisdom and discernment. According to them, everyone knows that discernment and wisdom constitute a person, and not just a face without them. The truth of this can be seen in angels of the inner heavens. Being involved in what is good and true from the Lord (and therefore in wisdom and discernment), they are in the loveliest and most perfect human form. Angels of lower heavens are less perfect and lovely in form. It is the other way around in hell. People there,, in heavens light, hardly look like people at all, but rather like monsters. They are involved in what is evil and false instead of what is good and true, and so they are involved in things contrary to wisdom and discernment. As a result, their life is not even called life, but spiritual death. 81. Since heaven does reflect a person overall and in detail because of the Lords Divine Human, angels refer to themselves as being in the Lord. Some of them say they are in His body, meaning in the good of His love. This accords with what the Lord Himself taught in the words, Stay in Me, and I in you: as the branch cannot bear fruit on its own, without staying in the vine, so neither can you, without staying in Me; . . . for without Me you can do nothing; . . . stay in my love; . . . if you follow my commands, you will stay in my love. (John 15:4-10) 82. Since this is how the Divine is perceived in the heavens, every individual who accepts any inflow from heaven has grafted into him a tendency to think of God in human guise. People of ancient times did this; people do it today, outside the church as well as within it. The unsophisticated visualize Him as a venerable figure surrounded by radiance. But everyone who has set this inflow from heaven aside through self-intelligence and an evil life, has stifled this ingrafted tendency. People who have destroyed it through self-intelligence prefer an invisible God; people who have stifled it through an evil life prefer no God at all.
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Neither class knows that an ingrafted tendency like this exists, since it is not within them. Yet this is the actual heavenly Divine, it is what first and foremost flows into man from heaven. This is because man is born for heaven, and no one enters heaven without some concept of the Divine. 83. This is why someone who is not engaged in the concept proper to heaventhe concept of the Divine which is heavens sourcecannot be brought up even to the first threshold of heaven. The moment he comes near, he feels an opposition, a forceful resistance. This is because his more inward elements, which are supposed to accept heaven, are closed, not being in the form of heaven. In fact, the closer he gets to heaven, the more tightly these more inward elements are closed. This is what happens to people in the church who deny the Lord, and to people who, like the Socinians, deny His Divine. As for what happens to people who are born outside the church, in ignorance of the Lord because they lack the Word, this will come out in later pages. 84. The question of the ancients having an anthropomorphic concept of the Divine is settled by the appearances of the Divine to Abraham, Lot, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah and his wife, and others, who did see God as a person, but did worship Him as God of the universe, calling Him God of heaven and earth, and Jehovah. It was the Lord who appeared to Abraham; this He teaches in John (8:56). We can see that this was the case in the other instances, judging from the Lords words, That no one has seen the Father or His face, or heard His voice. (John 1:18, 5:37) 85. But it is very hard for people to grasp the fact that God is a Person if they form their conclusions on the basis of the outer persons sensory data. The only way the senseoriented person can think about the Divine is through models from the world or worldly objects. So the oniy way he can think of a Divine or a spiritual person is the same way he thinks of a physical or natural one. As a result, he arrives at the conclusion that if God were Man, He would be as big as the universe, that if He ruled heaven and earth, He would use many assistants the way kings on earth do. Tell such people that there is not the kind of spatial extension in heaven that there is on earth, and they simply cannot understand it. For, anyone who does his thinking on the basis of nature and from natures light alone, invariably bases his thought on the kind of expanse that is presented to his eyes. But people go utterly astray when they think this way about heaven. Distance there is not like distance on earth. Here it is a limited distance and therefore measurable; there it is an unlimited distance and therefore immeasurable. But the topic of distance or extension in heaven will come up later, when we deal with space and time in the spiritual world. Further, everyone knows how far eyesight reacheseven to the sun and the stars, remote as they are. Anyone who thinks more deeply also knows that inner sight-the sight of thoughthas a far wider outreach, and he therefore knows that the more inward the sight, the wider the field. Then what about Divine sight, the inmost and highest of all? Since thoughts do have this kind of outreach, all the elements of heaven are communicated to each individual there. So are all the elements of the Divine which constitutes and fills heaven, as indicated in the previous chapter. 86. It baffles the inhabitants of heaven that people think they are smart if they think about the Lord by turning their minds to something invisible, something that cannot be confined in any
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formalso that they call people unintelligent and simple if they think otherwise. But it is just the other way around. The angels say, Let these people who think they are smart really examine themselves. Do they not see nature in Gods place? Some, the nature that is right in front of their eyes, some a nature that is not right in front of their eyes? And arent they so blind that they dont know the nature of God, of an angel, of a spirit, of their own soul which will live after death, of the life of heaven within man, and of a host of other things that go to make up intelligence? But the people they call simple know all these things in their own fashion. They have a concept of their God as being the Divine in human form, a concept of an angel as a heavenly person, a concept of their soul, which will live after death, as being like an angel, and a concept of the life of heaven on mans part as being to live according to Divine laws. These latter are the people the angels call intelligent and fit for heaven. The former kind they call unintelligent.

12. THERE IS A CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN EVERYTHING IN HEAVEN AND EVERYTHING IN MAN

87. The nature of correspondence is unknown nowadays; this for several reasons. The foremost reason is that man has moved himself away from heaven through love of self and love of the world. For a person who loves himself and the world primarily focuses on worldly things only, since these appeal to his outward senses and gratify his inclinations. He does not focus on spiritual things because these appeal to the inner senses and gratify the mind. As a result, people of this kind reject spiritual things, calling them too lofty to think about. The ancient people behaved differently. As far as they were concerned, a knowledge of correspondences was the finest of all knowledges. They drew discernment and wisdom through it; through it, church people were in touch with heaven. For this knowledge of correspondences is an angelic knowledge. Using correspondence itself, the most ancient people (who were celestial people) thought like angels and actually talked with angels as a result. For the same reason, the Lord often appeared to them and taught them. Nowadays, though, this knowledge has so vanished that even the nature of correspondence is unknown. 88. Now, without insight into the nature of correspondence, nothing can be known in clear light about the spiritual world, nothing about its inflow into the natural world, or even about what the spiritual is relative to the natural; nothing can be known in clear light about mans spirit, called his soul, and how it acts on the body, nothing about mans ~ state after death. Because of this, the nature and character of correspondence needs to be presented. This will pave the way for further matters. 89. Let us then first state the nature of correspondence. The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual worldnot just the natural world in general, but actually in details. So anything in the natural world that occurs from the spiritual world is called a correspondent. It is vital to understand that the natural world emerges and endures from the spiritual world, just like an effect from the cause that produces it. The natural world means all the expanse under the sun, receiving warmth and light from it. All the entities that are maintained from this source belong to that world. The spiritual world, in
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contrast, is heaven. All the things that are in the heavens belong to that world. 90. Since man is both a heaven and an earth in smallest form, on the model of the greatest (see n. 57 above), he has a spiritual world and a natural world within him. His spiritual world comprises his more inward elements, be-longing to his mind and having to do with discernment and intention. His natural world comprises his more outward elements, belonging to his body and having to do with its senses and behavior. So anything that occurs in his natural world (his body, its senses, and its actions)from his spiritual world (his mind, its discernment, and its intention) is called a correspondent. 91. The nature of correspondence is visible in man in his face. In a face which has not been trained to pretend, all the minds affections stand out visibly, in a physical form as in their imprint. This is why the face is called the index of the mind, a persons spiritual world contained within his natural world. In much the same way, the elements of discernment are represented in speech and the elements of intention in bodily attitudes. So these things that happen in the bodyface, speech, or attitudes alikeare called correspondences. 92. This may also serve to clarify what the inner person is and what the outer person is. The inner is what is called the spiritual person; the outer, the natural. Further, the two are quite distinct, as are heaven and earth, in such a way that, further still, everything that happens or emerges in the outer or natural person happens and emerges from the inner or spiritual. 93. All this has to do with the correspondence of the inner or spiritual realm of man with his outer or natural realm. Now we must deal with the correspondence of the totality of heaven with the details of man. 94. It has been pointed out that the whole heaven reflects a single person, that it is a person in all appearance, and that it is therefore called the Greatest Man. It has also been pointed out that the angelic communities that constitute heaven are therefore arranged like the members, organs, and viscera in a person. So there are some which are in the head, some in the chest, some in the arms, and some in specific parts of them (cf. nn. 59-72 above). So communities that are in a particular member there correspond to the like member in man those in the head, for example, correspond to the head in a person, those in the chest to the persons chest, those in the arms to his arms, and so on. Man has being from this correspondence, for man has being only from heaven. 95. The division of heaven into two kingdoms, one called celestial and one called spiritual, has been pointed out above in the appropriate section. In general, the celestial kingdom corresponds to the heart and to everything dependent on the heart throughout the body. The spiritual kingdom corresponds to the lungs and to everything dependent on them throughout the body. Heart and lungs constitute two kingdoms in man, with the hearts domain extending through the arteries and veins, and the lungs dominion through the nerve and motor tissues. Both are involved in whatever effort or activity occurs. There are also two kingdoms in every individuals spiritual world, which is called his spiritual person. One of these belongs to his intention and the other to his discernment. Intentions dominion extends through affections for what is good, and discernments through affections for what is true. These kingdoms correspond to the kingdoms of the heart and the lungs in the body. The situation in the heavens is similar. The celestial kingdom is the seat of heavens intention, where the good of love reigns. The spiritual kingdom is the seat of heavens discernment,
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where what is true reigns. These are what correspond to the functions of the heart and lungs in man. This correspondence is why the heart in the Word indicates intention, also the good of love; while the breath of the lungs indicates discernment and what is true of faith. This is also why affections are attributed to the heart, even though they are not in or from the heart. 96. The correspondence of heavens two kingdoms with the heart and lungs is the general correspondence of heaven with man. Less general is the correspondence with his particular members, organs, and viscera, whose nature will now be noted. In the Greatest Man, or heaven, people in the head are those who are involved in everything good more than others are. They are in fact involved in love, peace, innocence, wisdom, discernment, and in joy and happiness as a result. They flow into the head, and into things dependent on the head, in man; and they correspond to such things. In the Greatest Man, or heaven, the people who are in the chest are involved in the good of charity and faith. They flow into mans chest, and correspond to it. In the Greatest Man, or heaven, people in the loins or organs for generation are involved in marriage love. People in the feet are in the outmost good of heaven, which is called naturalspiritual good. People in the arms and hands are involved in the power of what is true from what is good. People in the eyes are involved in discernment; people in the ears, in hearkening and obedience; people in the nostrils, in perception; people in the mouth and tongue, in discussing on the basis of discernment and perception. People in the kidneys are involved in truth as examining, distinguishing, and correcting. People in the liver, pancreas, and spleen are involved in various kinds of cleansing of what is good and true. Other functions are performed elsewhere. These flow into parallel elements in man, and correspond to them. The inflowing of heaven is into the functions and uses of the members of the body. The uses, being from the spiritual world, take form by means of such materials as occur in the natural world. So they present themselves in their effect, which is the source of correspondence. 97. This is why these same members, organs, and viscera are used in the Word to denote parallel things; for everything in the Word has meaning according to correspondence. Head is therefore used to denote discernment and wisdom, chest, charity; loins, marriage love; arms and hands the power of what is true; feet, what is natural; eyes, discernment; nostrils, perception; ears, obedience; kidneys, examination of what is true; and so on. This is also why it is natural for people talking about intelligence and wisdom to speak of a good head, to speak of someone involved in charity as a bosom friend, to refer to someone perceptive as having a sharp nose, someone discerning as sharp-sighted, someone powerful as having a long arm, someone who wills something from his love as willing from his heart. These expressions, and many others in peoples language, stem from correspondence. They actually stem from the spiritual world, though people do not realize it. 98. The existence of this correspondence between everything heavenly and everything human has been demonstrated to me by an abundance of experiencesuch an abundance that I am so thoroughly convinced about these matters as to find them quite obvious, beyond any doubt. But listing all this experience is not our task at this point, and the very abundance precludes it. You may find it assembled in Arcana Coelestia in the treatment of correspondences, representations, the inflow of the spiritual world into the natural, and interaction between soul and body. 99. In spite of the fact that everything physical about man corresponds to everything heavenly,
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still a person is not a picture of heaven as far as his outward form is concerned, only as far as his inner form is concerned. It is the more inward elements of a person, after all, that receive heaven; his outer elements receive the world. So an individual is inwardly a heaven in least form, a reflection of the greatest heaven, so far as his more inward elements do receive heaven. To the degree that his more inward elements are unreceptive, he is not a heaven or a reflection of the greatest. Be that as it may, his more outward elements, which receive the world, may be in a form that follows some pattern of this worldwith different degrees of beauty, therefore. Outward or physical beauty, that is, goes back to parents and to formation in the womb. Thereafter it is maintained by means of a general inflow from the world. As a result, the form of an individuals natural person may differ radically from the form of his spiritual person. A number of times, I have been shown what the form of an individuals spirit was like, and with some people who looked lovely and charming, the spirit looked misshapen, black, and monstroussomething you would call a reflection of hell rather than of heaven. With others who were not beautiful, the spirit looked graceful, radiant, and angelic. After death, a persons spirit looks the way it actually was within his body while it dwelt there in the world. 100. But correspondence includes even more than just man. There is an intercorrespondence of the heavens, the second or middle heaven corresponding to the third or inmost, and the first or outmost heaven corresponding to the second or middle. This first heaven corresponds to physical forms in man, called members, organs, and viscera. So mans body is where heaven finally leaves off; it is what heaven stands on like a base. But this arcanum will be explained more fully elsewhere. 101. But the following fact must certainly be known: all the correspondence that exists with heaven is with the Lords Divine Human, since heaven is from Him and He is heaven, as has been pointed out in the preceding chapters. For unless the Divine Human did flow into all the elements of heavenand, following correspondences, into all the elements of earthneither angel nor man would exist. This clarifies again why the Lord became Man, why He covered His Divine with a Human from beginning to end. This happened because the Divine Human which has sustained heaven before the Lords coming was no longer adequate to keep everything going, since man, the base of the heavens, had undermined and destroyed the pattern. 102. Angels are baffled when they hear that there actually are people who ascribe everything to nature and nothing to the Divine, people who believe that their bodies, where so many heavenly marvels are assembled, are just put together out of natural elementswho believe nature to be the source even of mans rationality. Yet if only they could raise their minds a bit, they would see that things like this are from the Divine, not from nature, that nature was created simply to clothe the spiritual, to act as its correspondent and to give it presence in the lowest realm of the overall design. Angels compare people like this to owls, who see in the dark but not in the light.

13. HEAVEN HAS A CORRESPONDENCE WITH EVERYTHING ON EARTH

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103. The nature of correspondence has been described in the last section, along with the explanation that all the specific components of the animate body are correspondences. Next we need to point out that all things on earthin general, everything in the worldare correspondences. 104. All things on earth are divided into three classes called kingdoms-the animal kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. Things in the animal kingdom are correspondences of the first level, because they are alive. Things in the vegetable kingdom are correspondences in the second level, because they simply grow. Things in the mineral kingdom are correspondences of the third level, since they neither live nor grow. Correspondences in the animal kingdom are the various kinds of living creatures, ones that walk and creep on the earth as well as ones that fly in the air. The different kinds are not listed here because they are well known. Correspondences in the vegetable kingdom are all the things that grow and bloom in gardens, forests, fields, and meadows. These are not listed either, since they too are well known. Correspondences in the mineral kingdom are the more and less noble metals, precious and ordinary stones, various kinds of earths, and even liquids. In addition to these, correspondences are things made out of them by human diligence for human use-for example, all kinds of foods, items of clothing, houses, buildings, and many other things. 105. Things above the earth like the sun, the moon, and the stars, and things in the atmospheres like clouds, storms, rain lightning, and thunder, are correspondences too. Things that stem from the sun, from its presence or its absence, like light and shade, heat and cold, are also correspondences. So are things which depend on these phenomena, like the seasons of the year, called spring, summer, fall, and winter, and the parts of the day, like morning, noon, evening, and night. 106. In short, all the things that occur in nature, from the smallest to the greatest, are correspondences. Their being correspondences stems from the fact that the natural world and everything in it emerges and persists from the spiritual world, with both worlds emerging and persisting from the Divine. It is said that something also persists because everything does persist to the extent that it keeps emerging, persisting being really a continual emerging. This is said also because nothing can persist on its own, only from something prior to itself, and therefore from a First. If it is ever separated from this First, it utterly wastes away and vanishes. 107. A correspondent is anything that emerges and persists in nature as a result of the Divine design. The Divine design is a product of the Divine good that issues from the Lord. It has its beginning from Him, issues from Him through the successive heavens into the world, and finishes there in the extremities. Things there that are there in accord with the design are correspondences. The things which are in accord with the design there are all the things that are good and are thoroughly fitted for use, everything good being good according to its use. The form has to do with what is true, since the true is the form of the good. This is why everything in the whole worldeverything participating in the nature of the world that is in the Divine design, has to do with the good and the true. 108. It is proposed, then, that everything in the world emerges as a result of the Divine, being clothed in whatever elements in nature enable it to be there, to serve a use, and in this way to correspond. There is clear support for this in the visible details of both the animal and the vegetable kingdom. In each kingdom there are things of such a nature that anyone who thinks
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deeply can see that they come from heaven. As illustrations, we may cite a few of the myriads that exist, beginning with some from the animal kingdom. Here, the existence of a kind of innate knowledge in all sorts of animals is widely recognized. Bees know how to gather honey from flowers, how to build little cells out of wax where their honey can be stored, providing food for themselves and their dependents against the coming winter. Their queen lays eggs, while other bees take care of them and tuck them away so that new progeny will be born from them. They live within a kind of governmental structure that they all know innately. They protect useful members and eject useless ones or deny them food. Then there are other marvelous things given them from heaven for the sake of use. Their wax serves the human race worldwide for light, and their honey for flavoring foods. [2] And what about caterpillars, the most unattractive members of the animal kingdom? They know how to get nourishment from the juice of appropriate leaves, and how after a precise time to form a cocoon around themselvesto put themselves in a womb, so to speakand to hatch offspring of their own kind in this way. Some of them change into nymphs and chrysalids first, and make new threads. Then, after exhausting labor, they are fitted out with a new body adorned with wings. They fly through the air as though it were their heaven, they consummate their marriages, lay their eggs, and provide a posterity for themselves. [3] Beside these particular examples, all the winged creatures of the sky in general know the foods that are good for them. They know not only what these foods are, but where they are. They know how to build themselves nests, lay and incubate eggs in them, hatch their chicks, feed them, and send them away from home when they are ready to be on their own. They know the enemies to avoid; they know the friends to seek outall this from the beginning of infancy. And how can I leave out miracles within the egg itself, where everything necessary for the forming and nourishment of the incipient chick lies ready and properly arranged? And beyond this there are countless other examples. [4] Is there anyoneanyone who thinks with a trace of cogent wisdom, that iswho would claim that these wonders come from any source but the spiritual world?the spiritual world, which the natural world serves by clothing its output in a body, or by giving effective presence to things that, causally regarded, are spiritual? Why is it that both earthbound and flying animals are born into all this knowledge, but not man, who is actually superior to them? The reason is that animals are engaged in the true design of their life. They have not been able to destroy the elements from the spiritual world that are within them because they have no rationality. Man, whose thinking arises from the spiritual world, is different. With the support of his rationality, he has corrupted the output of the spiritual world within himself, through a disorderly life. So he must be born into complete ignorance, and be led back from there into the design of heaven by Divine means. 109. Many examples might be used to show how things in the vegetable kingdom correspond. For example, there is the growth of seeds into trees, their putting forth leaves, bearing flowers and then fruit in which, in turn, they lay seeds. These events occur in sequence and they come together in such a marvelous order that there is no way to describe it briefly. It would take volumes, and still the deeper secrets, more basic to the function of plants, could not be fully understood. Inasmuch as these matters too have their origin in the spiritual world or heaven, which is in human form (as pointed out in the pertinent chapter above), even the details of the plant world have a certain relationship to things within man. There are people in the learned world who recognize this. An abundance of experience has made it clear to me that everything in that kingdom is a correspondence as well. Often, for example, when I was in a garden looking at trees, fruits,
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flowers, and vegetables, I noticed correspondences in heaven. Then I talked with the people involved and was taught where they came from and what their quality was. 110. But nowadays heaven is the only source of knowing the spiritual things in heaven to which natural things on earth correspond. The knowledge of correspondences is simply demolished. So I should like to use a few examples to show what the correspondence between spiritual and natural things is like. www.universe-people.com In general, the land animals correspond to affections. The gentle and useful ones correspond to good affections, the ruthless and unserviceable ones to evil affections. Specifically, cows and calves correspond to affections of the natural mind, sheep and lambs to affections of the spiritual mind. The various kinds of winged creatures, on the other hand, correspond to intellectual elements in the one mind or the other. So in the Israelitish Church (which was a representative church), different animals like cows, calves, rams, sheep, female and male goats, male and female lambs, even pigeons and turtledoves were accepted for holy service and used for sacrifices and burnt offerings. In that use they actually corresponded to spiritual things which were discerned in heaven according to correspondences. The reason that animals, genus by genus and species by species, are affections, is that they are alive. For nothing possesses life except out of affection and according to affection. This is why every animal has innate knowledge in keeping with the affection of his life. Even man is much the same as far as his natural person is concerned. So he is in fact likened to animals in everyday idioms. For example, we call a gentle person a sheep or a lamb, a cruel one a bear or a wolf, a shrewd one a fox or a snake, etc. 111. There is a similar correspondence with things in the vegetable kingdom. In general, a garden corresponds to heaven viewed as to its discernment and wisdom. So heaven is called the garden of God and Paradise, and also, by man, a heavenly Paradise. Trees, species by species, correspond to perceptions and insights of what is good and true, the raw material of discernment and wisdom. So the ancient people, who were involved in the knowledge of correspondences, held their holy worship in groves. This is also why trees are mentioned so many times in the Word and used as analogues to heaven, the church, and mantrees like the vine, the olive, the cedar, and others. The good things people do are compared to fruits. Foods derived from plantsespecially from field-grown grainscorrespond to affections for what is good and true, because these nourish spiritual life the way earthly foods nourish natural life. So bread in general corresponds to an affection for everything good because it supports life more commonly than other foods, and because the word bread is used to denote all kinds of food. It is by reason of this correspondence that the Lord calls Himself the Bread of Life. This is why bread was put to holy use in the Israelitish Church, placed on a table in the tabernacle, and called the bread of Presence. All Divine worship performed with sacrifice and burnt offering was called bread, as well. This correspondence is also the reason that the most holy act of worship in the Christian Church is the Holy Supper, in which the bread and the wine are given. These few examples may suffice to establish what correspondence is like. 112. Now we may state briefly how heaven is yoked with earth by means of correspondences. The Lords kingdom is a kingdom of purposes which are useful functionsor a kingdom of useful functions which are purposes, which amounts to the same thing. The universe has therefore been so created and formed by the Divine that wherever useful functions occur, they may clothe themselves in the kinds of material that enable them to stand up in action or effectiveness. They do so clothe themselves beginning in heaven, and then in the worldthat is,
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step by step and in order right down to the outmost elements of nature. We can therefore see that the correspondence between natural and spiritual, between the world and heaven, is by useful functions; and these functions make the bond. The forms that clothe functions are correspondences, and bonds, to the extent that they are the forms that belong to the functions. In the worlds nature, with its threefold kingdom, all the things that occur according to the Design are forms that belong to functions, or results shaped by functions for the sake of function. So all the things in it are correspondences. But as far as man is concerned, the degree to which he lives according to the Divine design in love to the Lord, that is, and charity toward the neighbordetermines the extent to which his actions are functions in form, are correspondences through which he is bonded with heaven. Loving the Lord and the neighbor, generally, is equal to fulfilling useful functions. It is further worth knowing that it is man by whom the natural world is bonded with the spiritual worldthat man is the medium of connection. For there is a natural world within him and a spiritual world as well (see above, n. 57). So man is a medium of connection to the extent that he is spiritual. But to the extent that he is natural and not spiritual, he is not a medium of connection. The Divine inflow into the world does continue even without man as a medium. It continues into the things in man that come from the world, but not into his rationality. 113. Just as everything that follows the Divine design corresponds to heaven, everything that disagrees with the Divine design corresponds to hell. The things that correspond to heaven all have to do with what is good and true; the things that correspond to hell all have to do with what is evil and false. 114. Now we may say a bit about the knowledge of correspondences and the use of that knowledge. We have already noted that the spiritual worldheavenis connected to the natural world through correspondences. As a consequence, communication with heaven is given to man through correspondences. The angels of heaven do not think on the basis of natural phenomena, the way men do. So when a person is involved in the knowledge of correspondences, he can be united with angels as touches the thoughts of his mind. So he can be bonded to them as touches his spiritual or inner person. To provide a bond between heaven and man, the Word was composed by pure correspondences. The whole Word and its details have correspondence. If man were involved in the knowledge of correspondences, then he would understand the Word in its spiritual meaning. In this way it would be granted him to understand arcana of which he sees no trace in the literal meaning. The Word does contain a literal meaning and a spiritual meaning. The literal meaning is composed of worldly things, while the spiritual meaning is composed of heavenly things. Since the bond between heaven and earth is by correspondences, this kind of Word has been provided, in which the details do correspond, right down to the smallest letters. 115. I have been taught from heaven that the most ancient people on our earth, who were celestial people, did their thinking by means of actual correspondences. The natural things of this world, the things before their very eyes, served them as means for this kind of thinking. Being like this, they associated with angels and talked with them. Through them, heaven was bonded to earth. On this account, that era was called the Golden Age, the age when, early writers say, heavenly beings dwelt with men and communed with them as friend with friend.
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But after their era, there came people who did not think by means of actual correspondences, but by means of knowledge about correspondences. So there was even then a bond between heaven and man, but not such an intimate one. Their era is the one called the Silver Age. Then came people who knew some correspondences, but did not do their thinking by means of this knowledge. This was because they were involved in natural good, and not, like their predecessors, in spiritual good. Their era is known as the Bronze Age. After their era, man became increasingly external, and finally carnal. At this point, the knowledge of correspon dences was completely destroyed, and along with it the awareness of heaven and of many related matters. The very naming of these eras after gold, silver, and bronze comes from correspondence. Gold, by correspondence, denotes celestial good, in which the most ancient people were involved. Silver denotes spiritual good, in which the ancient people were involved; and bronze denotes natural good, in which their immediate descendants were involved. Iron, after which the last era was named, denotes what is true without what is good.

14. THE SUN IN HEAVEN

116. This worlds sun is not visible in heaven, nor is anything that comes from it, because all such things are natural. Nature actually begins with that sun, and everything produced by means of it is called natural. But the spiritual realm, where heaven is, is higher than nature and quite distinct from anything natural. These realms communicate with each other only by means of correspondences. The nature of this distinction can be understood with the aid of the information given above (n. 38) about levels. Material about correspondence in the last two chapters may aid comprehension of the nature of the communication. 117. But in spite of the fact that neither this worlds sun nor anything from it is visible in heaven, there is still a sun there. There is light and warmth, there are all the things we have on earth and countless others. However, they are not from the same source, for things in heaven are spiritual and things in the world are natural. Heavens sun is the Lord. Heavens light is Divine truth, its warmth Divine good, issuing from the Lord as if from a sun. This is the source of all the things that emerge or appear in the heavens. But in subsequent chapters there will be information about light and warmth and the things that come into being in heaven from this source. Here we deal only with that sun. The reason the Lord is seen as a sun in heaven is that He is Divine love, the source from which all spiritual things emerge andvia the worlds sunall natural things. That love is what shines like a sun. 118. The Lords actual appearing in heaven like a sun is not just something angels have told me about, but something I have been allowed to see several times. So now I should like to describe briefly what I have seen and heard about the Lord as a sun. The Lord does not appear as a sun in heaven, but high above the heavens; not overhead or straight up, but in front of the angels faces, at a medium elevation. He appears in two places, one before the right eye and one before the left, with a perceptible space between. To the right eye He looks exactly like a sun, with something like the same fire and size as earths sun has. To the left eye He does not look like a sun but like a moon, with a similar but more glistening
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luster, of a size similar to our earths moon. However, it appears to be surrounded by miniature moons, each of them shining and glistening in like manner. The reason the Lord appears in two places, and so differently, is that His appearance to anyone depends on the way He is accepted. He looks one way to people who accept Him with the good of love, and another way to people who accept Him with the good of faith. To people who accept Him with the good of love, He looks like a sun, fiery and flaming in keeping with their acceptance. These people are in His celestial kingdom. To people who accept Him with the good of faith, though, He looks like a moon, lustrous and glistening in keeping with the acceptance. These people are in His spiritual kingdom. This is because the good of love corresponds to fire, so that fire in a spiritual meaning is love. The good of faith corresponds to light, and light in a spiritual meaning is faith. He appears before the eyes because the more inward elements, those of the mind, see through the eyes. They look from loves good through the right eye, and from faiths good through the left eye. For everything on the right side of an angel or of a man corresponds to the good which is the source of the true; while things in the left correspond to the true that comes from the good. Faiths good is basically something true derived from something good. 119. This is why in the Word the Lord in respect to love is compared to the sun, while in respect to faith He is compared to the moon. Also, love for the Lord, from the Lord, is indicated by the sun, and faith in the Lord, from the Lord, by the moon. So in the following passages: The light of the moon will be like the light of the sun: while the suns light will be increased sevenfold, like the light of seven days.(Isaiah30:26) When I destroy you, I will cover the heavens and darken the stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not make her light shine forth; I will darken all the lights in the heavens above you, and set darkness over your land. (Ezekiel 32:7,8) I will dim the sun at its rising, and the moon will not make her light shine forth. (Isaiah 13:10) The sun and the moon will be darkened, and the stars will withhold their radiance; . . . the sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood. (Joel 2:2, l0,31;4:15) The sun was blackened like a hairy sack, and the moon made like blood, and the stars fell on the earth. (Revelation 6:12) Immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give her light, and the stars will fall from heaven. (Matthew 24:29) and elsewhere. In these passages, love is indicated by the sun and faith by the moon, while awareness of what is good and what is true are indicated by the stars. These are described as darkening, losing their light, and falling from heaven, when they no longer exist. The Lords appearing as a sun in heaven is also confirmed by the way He was transfigured in front of Peter, James, and John that His face shone like the sun. (Matthew 17:2) This is the way the Lord looked to His disciples when they were withdrawn from the body and in heavens light. For this reason, the ancient people, who had a representative church, faced toward the sun in the east when they were engaged in Divine worship. They, in turn, are the source of building temples to face the east. 120. The amount and nature of Divine love can be determined by comparison with this worlds sun, which burns most intensely. Believe it or not, Divine love is far more fiery. The Lord as the sun therefore does not flow directly into the heavens, but the warmth of His love is tempered bit
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by bit in transit. The tempering agents look like gleaming bands around the sun. Besides this, the angels are shielded by a cloud, appropriately thin, so as not to be hurt by the inflow. So the heavens are spaced according to acceptance. The higher heavens, being involved in loves good, are nearest to the Lord as the sun. The lower heavens, being involved in faiths good, are farther from it. People involved in nothing good whatever, though, like those in hell, are actually farthest away; and they are just as far away as they are opposed to what is good. 121. However, when the Lord appears in heaven, as often happens, He does not appear clothed with the sun, but in angelic form, distinguished from angels by something Divine shining from His face. He is not actually there in person, for His person is continually clothed with the sun; He is there with an effective presence by means of an appearance. It is quite usual in heaven for things to appear as present at the point where sight is focused or terminated, in spite of the fact that this may be quite remote from the place where they actually are. This presence is called the presence of inner sight, and will be mentioned further below. The Lord has in fact appeared to me outside the sun, in an angelic form a bit below the sun on high; also close at hand in a similar form, with His face shining; and once in the midst of some angels as a flaming radiance. 122. This worlds sun looks to angels like something dark at the other end of things from the sun of heaven. Our moon looks like something gloomy at the other end from heavens moon, consistently. The reason is that anything fiery in this world corresponds to love of self, with any light from it corresponding to falsity stemming from that love. Love of self is quite contrary to Divine love; and the falsity that stems from it is quite contrary to Divine truth. Anything contrary to Divine love and Divine truth is darkness to angels. As a result, the meaning in the Word of worshipping earths sun and moon and prostrating oneself to them is loving oneself and the false things that stem from self-love. On the elimination of these practices, see Deut. 4:9; 17:3-5; Jer. 8:1,2; Ez. 8:15, 16, 18; Rev. 16:8; Matt. 13:6. 123. Since the Lord, because of the Divine love which is in Him and from Him, is visible in heaven as a sun, all the people in heaven turn steadily toward Him. People in the celestial kingdom turn toward Him as a sun; people in the spiritual kingdom turn toward Him as a moon. But the people in the hells turn toward the dark and gloomy entities that come from the contrary source, and so turn their backs to the Lord. This is because all the people in the hells are involved in self-love and love of the world, and are therefore opposed to the Lord. The people who turn toward the dark place where earths sun is are toward the rear in the hells, and are called genii. The people who turn toward the gloomy place where the moon is are farther forward in the hells, and are called spirits. So the people who are in the hells are described as being in the gloom, while people in heaven are described as being in the light. Gloom refers to the falsity that comes from what is evil, and light to the truth that comes from what is good. This turning occurs because all people in the other life direct their attention to the controlling forces within themselvesthat is, to their loves. It is also these more inward elements that make the face of an angel or spirit; and in the spiritual world there are no fixed compass points like those in the natural worldit is the face that determines the direction. Man too, in spirit, turns himself in a similar fashion. People involved in self-love and love of the world are turning themselves away from the Lord, and people involved in a love of Him and love toward their fellowmen are turning toward Him. But man, being involved in a natural world where compass points are determined by sunrise and sunset, is unaware of this. Since this matter is hard for people to grasp, it will be clarified later, in dealing with directions,
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space, and time. 124. Because the Lord is heavens sun, and all the things that come from Him face Him, the Lord is the common center, the source of every direction and boundary. For the same reason too, all the things beneath are in His presence and under His guidance, whether they are in the heavens or on earth. 125. These observations let us see in clearer light the statements made in previous sections about the Lord, to the effect that He is the God of heaven (nn. 2-6). His Divine constitutes heaven (nn. 7-12).The Lords Divine in heaven is love for Him and charity toward fellowman (nn. 13-19).There is a correspondence with heaven of everything on earth, and through heaven, a correspondence with the Lord (nn. 81-1 15). Finally, earths sun and moon have correspondence (n. 105).

15. LIGHT AND WARMTH IN HEAVEN 126. People who use only nature as the basis for their thinking cannot possibly grasp the fact that there is light in the heavens, yet the fact is that there is so much light that it exceeds by many times the light of noonday on earth. This I have often witnessed, even at evening and night times. At first I was puzzled when I heard angels saying that earths light was hardly anything but shadow compared to heavens light. But having seen, I can assert that this is true. Its brilliance and radiance are of a quality beyond description. What I have seen in the heavens I have seen in this lighttherefore more clearly and distinctly than in the world. 127. Heavens light is not a natural light, like the worlds light, but a spiritual one. It actually comes from the Lord as the sun, this sun being Divine love, as stated in the last chapter. In heaven, that which issues from the Lord as the sun is called the Divine-True. However, it is essentially the Divine-Good made one with the Divine-True. From it angels have light and warmthlight from the Divine-True and warmth from the Divine-Good. This enables us to conclude that heavens light, coming as it does from this kind of source, is spiritual and not natural, likewise heavens warmth. 128. The reason the Divine-True is light to angels is that angels are spiritual and not natural. Spiritual beings see because of their sun, natural beings from theirs. Divine truth is the source of angels discernment, and discernment is their inner sight which flows into their outer sight and produces it. So things that are visible in heaven from the Lord as the sun appear in that light. This being the source of light in heaven, then, this light varies according to the acceptance of the Divine-True from the Lord, or, that is, according to the intelligence and wisdom the angels are involved in. It is therefore different in the celestial kingdom than it is in the spiritual kingdom, and different in each particular community. The light in the celestial kingdom looks fiery, since the angels there accept light from the Lord as the sun. The light in the spiritual kingdom, on the other hand, is white, since the angels there accept light from the Lord as the moon (see above, n. 118). Further, the light is not the same in one community as in another. It varies even within one
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community, with the people at the center being in more light and those toward the borders in less (see n. 43). In a word, angels have light to the precise degree that they are accepting of the Divine-True that is, are involved in intelligence and wisdom from the Lord. This is why heavens angels are called angels of light. 129. Since the Lord in the heavens is the Divine-True, and the Divine-True there is light, the Lord and every true thing that comes from Himis called light in the Word, as in the following passages: Jesus said. I am the light of the world; whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of light. (John 8:12) As long as I am in the world, I am the worlds light. (John 9:5) Jesus . . . said The light is with you for a short while only; while you have light, walk, lest darkness overtake you: . . . while you have light, believe in the light so that you may be children of light . . . I have come into the world as light, so that anyone who believes in Me will not stay in darkness. (John 12:35, 36, 46) Light has come into the world, but men have loved darkness more than light. (John 3:19) John says of the Lord: This is the true light that enlightens every man. (John 1:4, 9) The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light; and on those who were sitting in the shadow of death, light has risen. (Matthew 4:16) I will make you a covenant for the people, a light for the nations. (Isaiah 42:6) I have set you up as the light of the nations, so that you would be my salvation right to the end of the earth. (Isaiah 49:6) The nations that have been saved will walk toward His light. (Revelation 21:24) Send forth Thy light and Thy truth, may they lead me. (Ps. 43:3) In these and other passages, the Lord is called light by reason of the Divine-True that comes from him. The truth itself is likewise called light. Since light exists in heaven from the Lord as the sun, when He was transfigured in front of Peter, James, and John His face looked like the sun, and his clothes like light, gleaming and white as snow, as no fuller on earth could whiten them. (Mark 9:3, Matthew 17:2) The reason the Lords clothes looked this way was that they pictured the Divine-True from Him in the heavens. Clothes in the Word refer to truths, for which reason it is said in David, Jehovah, Thou surroundest Thyself with light like a garment. (Psalm 104:2) 130. It has been proposed that light in the heavens is spiritual, and that this light is the DivineTrue. This can be inferred from the fact that man too has spiritual light, and has enlightenment from it to the extent to which he is engaged in intelligence and wisdom from the Divine-True. Mans spiritual light is the light of his discernment, which properly focuses on truths, arranging them analytically in patterns, constructing theorems, and coming to consecutive conclusions on this basis. The natural person is unaware of the reality of the light which enables the intellect to see this sort of thing, for he neither sees it with his eyes nor senses it with his thought. But many people do recognize it, nevertheless, and distinguish it from a natural light that involves people who think naturally rather than spiritually. People think naturally who focus only on the world, and give nature credit for everything. But people think spiritually who focus on heaven, and give the Divine credit for everything. The existence of a true light that enlightens the mind (quite distinct from the light called natural
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illumination) has been presented to my perception and sight many times. I have gradually been inwardly raised into that light; and as I was raised, my intellect was enlightned to the point that I could perceive what I had not perceived beforeultimately things totally incomprehensible to thought from natural illumination. At times I resented the fact that they were incomprehensible, when they were at the same time so clearly and obviously perceptible in heavenly light. Since light is a property of discernment, we can talk about discernment rather as we do about the eye, saying, for instance, that it sees and is in the light when it perceives, that it is veiled or shaded when it does not perceive, and many similar expressions. 131. Inasmuch as heavens light is the Divine-True, it is also Divine wisdom and intelligence. So being raised into heavens light means the same thing as being raised into intelligence and wisdom, and being enlightened. As a result, light among angels exists corresponding precisely to the level of their intelligence and wisdom. Since heavens light is Divine wisdom, everyones quality is recognizable in heavens light; the whole quality of what is within each person shows in his face. Not the least element is concealed. More inward angels love to have everything that belongs to them show because they intend only what is good. This is not the case with people who are below heaven and do not intend what is good. Such people have an intense fear of being seen in heavens light. And strange as it seems, people in hell look human to each other, but in heavens light they look monstrous, with frightening faces and bodiesthey are the very models of their own evil. Man, as far as his spirit is concerned, has a similar appearance when angels look at him. If he is good, he looks like a beautiful person in proportion to his goodness; while if he is evil he looks monstrous, misshapen, in proportion to his evil. So we can see that everything becomes obvious in heavens lighteverything becomes obvious because heavens light is the Divine-True. 132. Because the Divine-True is light in the heavens, everything true anywhere is radiant, be it within an angel or outside him, within the heavens or outside them. True things outside the heavens, though, are not radiant the same way true things within the heavens are. True things outside the heavens have a cold radiance, like something snow-white without warmth. This is because they do not draw their essential substance from what is good the way true elements within heaven do. That cold light therefore vanishes when heavens light penetrates it; and if evil underlies it, it turns to gloom. This I have seen several times, this and many other noteworthy phenomena involving shining truths, which I omit at this point. 133. Some description of heavens warmth is now in order. Heavens warmth is essentially love. It issues from the Lord as the sun, whose nature is Divine love within the Lord and from the Lord you may find stated in the preceding chapter. So we can see that heavens warmth is just as spiritual as heavens light, since it comes from the same source. There are two things that issue from the Lord as the sunthe Divine-True and the DivineGood. The Divine-True presents itself in the heavens as light, and the Divine-Good as warmth. Yet the Divine-True and the Divine-Good are united in such a way that they are not two entities, but one. However, they are separated with angels, since there are some angels who accept the Divine-Good more than the Divine-True, and some who accept the Divine-True more than the Divine-Good. The ones who accept more Divine-Good are in the Lords celestial kingdom, while the ones who accept more Divine-True are in the Lords spiritual kingdom. The most perfect angels are the ones who accept both to the same degree. 134. Heavens warmth, like heavens light, varies from place to place. It is one thing in the celestial kingdom and another in the spiritual kingdom, and it is also different in each particular
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community there. It varies not only in degree, but in quality. It is more concentrated and pure in the Lords celestial kingdom because the angels there accept more Divine-Good. It is less concentrated and pure in the Lords spiritual kingdom because the angels there accept more Divine-True. In each particular community, too, it varies according to the acceptance. There is warmth in the hells, too, but it is unclean. Warmth in heaven is what is meant by holy and heavenly fire while the warmth of hell is meant by profane fire and hellfire. Each one refers to loveheavenly fire to love for the Lord and love toward the neighbor, and to every affection proper to these loves; while hellfire refers to love of self and love of the world and to every craving proper to these loves. The identity of love and warmth from a spiritual source is shown by the warming that follows upon love. A person is kindled and warmed in proportion to his loves extent and quality, and loves full heat shows itself when it is attacked. This is why, too, it is possible to speak of being kindled, warming up, blazing, boiling, or burning, when speaking of the affections proper to a good love and the cravings proper to an evil love as well. 135. The sensation of warmth at the touch of love coming from the Lord as the sun occurs because the more inward elements of angels are involved in love as a result of the Divine-Good that comes from the Lord. Their more outward elements, which are kindled by this means, are in warmth as a result. This is why love and warmth in heaven correspond to each other, so that a person is in a warmth in keeping with the quality of his love, in line with what has just been said. The worlds warmth does not penetrate heaven at all, since it is too crude, being natural rather than spiritual. This situation is not the same with people on earth, though, since they are in both the spiritual world and the natural world. As far as their spirits are concerned, they grow warm in direct proportion to their love. But as far as their bodies are concerned, they grow warm from both sourceswarmth of spirit and the warmth of the world. The former flows into the latter because the two correspond. The kind of correspondence that exists between the two kinds of warmth can be determined from animals, from the fact that their loves (the primary one being a love of generating offspring of their own kind) burst into action depending on the presence and abundance of warmth from the earths sun, which warmth occurs only in spring and summer times. People who believe that the earths inflowing warmth arouses these loves are quite mistaken. An inflow of the natural into the spiritual does not occur, only an inflow of the spiritual into the natural. This latter inflow follows from the Divine design, while the latter contradicts the Divine design. 136. Like men, angels have discernment and intending. Heavens light constitutes the life of their discernment, since heavens light is the DivineTrue and the consequent Divine wisdom. Heavens warmth constitutes the life of their intending, since heavens warmth is the Divine-Good and the consequent Divine love. The angels very life comes from warmth, and not from light except as there is warmth in it. Lifes dependence on warmth is obvious, since if warmth is taken away, life ceases. There is a similar situation with faith apart from love, or with the true apart from the good. For the truth that is ascribed to faith is light, and the good ascribed to love is warmth. These principles emerge even more clearly from observation of the worlds warmth and light, to which heavens warmth and light correspond. It is from the worlds warmth, combined with light, that everything on earth comes to life and blooms. They are combined in spring and summertime. But from light without warmth, nothing comes to life and bloomseverything becomes sluggish and dies. They are not combined in winter time. Then warmth is gone, while light continues. This correspondence is the basis of heavens being called a paradise, since there what is true is combined with what is good-or faith with love-like light with warmth in springtime on earth. All this confirms the truth discussed in the appropriate chapter above (nn. 13-19), that the
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Lords Divine in heaven is love for Him and charity toward the neighbor. 137. It says in John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word: . . . all things were made by means of It, and without It nothing was made that was made. In It was life, and the life was the light of men.... He was in the world, and the world was made by means of Him, . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory. (John 1:1,3, 4, 10, 14) It is obviously the Lord who is meant by the Word, since it says that the Word was made flesh. But precisely what the Word means is still unknown, so let us explain. The Word is the Divine-Truth that is in the Lord and from the Lord. Therefore He is there referred to as light, whose identity with the Divine-True has been explained earlier in this chapter. The making and creating of everything by means of the Divine-True is next to be explained. 112] In heaven, all power belongs to the Divine-True-without this, there is absolutely none. All angels are called powers because of the Divine-True, and depending on the degree to which they are acceptances and receiving vessels, they are powers. By means of what is true they prevail over the hells and over all who set themselves against them. A thousand foes cannot withstand one ray of heavens light, which is the Divine-True. Since angels are angels by reason of their acceptance of the Divine-True, it follows that the whole heaven has no other basis of existence; for heaven is composed of angels. [3] The idea that the Divine-True has so much power in it is one which people cannot believe i~ their only concept of what is true is that it has to do with thinking or speaking. These have no intrinsic power, except as other people act on them out of obedience. But the Divine-True has intrinsic power, such power that through it heaven was created and earth was created, with all the things they contain. Light may be shed on the fact that the Divine-True has so much power by means of a pair of comparisons: by considering the power of what is true and good within man, and by considering the power of light and warmth from the sun in the world. The power of what is true and good in man: Whatever a person does, he does by virtue of his discernment and his intending. By virtue of his intending, he acts through what is good; by virtue of his discernment, he acts through what is true. For all the things that are in his intending have to do with what is good, and all the things that are in his discernment have to do with what is true. From these, then, the person activates his whole body, with thousands of elements in it acceding freely to their bidding and urging. This demonstrates that the whole body is constructed for submission to what is good and trueconstructed therefore on the basis of what is good and true. [4] The power of light and warmth from the sun in the world: All growing things in the world things like trees, grains, flowers, grasses, fruits, and seedsemerge solely by reason of the suns warmth and light. So their inherent productive power is obvious. What power must Divine light not have then, which is the Divine-True, and Divine warmth which is the Divine-Good? For these are the sources of heavens existence and the worlds as well, since the world exists by reason of heaven, as stated above. This shows us how to understand the statements that all things were made by means of the Word, that without it nothing was made that was made, and that the world was made by means of Himthis means by means of the Divine-True from the Lord. This is also why in the book of Genesis it speaks of light first, and later about things derived from light (Genesis 1:3,4). This is why, too, everything in the universe-in heaven and in the world alike-has to do with the good and the true, and with their bonding, if it is really to be anything at all.
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139. [There is no n. 138 in the original.] It needs to be realized that the Divine-Good and the Divine-True which occur in the heavens from the Lord as the sun, are not in the Lord but from the Lord. Within the Lord there is only Divine Love, which is the Reality from which all things arise. Arising from Reality is what issuing means. This can be illumined by comparison with the worlds sun. The warmth and light that are in the world are not in the sun but from the sun. Within the sun there is only fire, and from that fire the other things emerge and issue forth. 140. Since the Lord as the sun is Divine Love, and Divine Love is itself the Divine-Good, the Divine that issues from Him (which is His Divine in heaven) is called the Divine True in order to identify it clearly, even though it is the Divine-Good united with the Divine-True. This Divine-True is what is called the Holy Spirit that issues from Him.

16. THE FOUR MAJOR REGIONS IN HEAVEN

141.In heaven, as in the world, there are four major regions, east, south, west, and north. Each set is determined by its own sunin heaven, by heavens sun, which is the Lord, and in the world by the worlds sun. Beyond this, however, major differences arise. The first difference is that in the world we call south the direction where the sun reaches its greatest height above the earth, north its opposite position below the horizon, east the direction where the sun rises at the equinoxes, and west where it sets at those times. In the world, then, all the major regions are determined from the south. But in heaven, that direction is called east where the Lord is seen as the sun. The opposite direction is west, south in heaven is to the right, and north is to the left. This holds true no matter which way people turn their faces or bodies. So in heaven, all the major regions are determined from the east. The reason for calling it east [oriens] where the Lord is seen as the sun, is that the whole source [origo] of life is from Him as the sun. Further to the extent that warmth and light-or love and intelligence-from Him are accepted among angels, the Lord is said to have risen [exoriri] among them. This is also why the Lord is called the East in the Word. 142. A second point of difference is that the east is always in front of angels, the west behind, south to the right, and north to the left. But since this is hard to grasp in a world where people turn to face any direction, it will be explained. All heaven turns toward the Lord as toward its common center; so all angels turn that way. The tendency of every vertical on the earth toward a common center is recognized. But the vertical line in heaven differs from the vertical line in the world, since in heaven the frontal parts face the common center, while in the world the lowest parts do. The vertical line in the world is what we call the centripetal and gravity. Angels more inward elements are turned forward, and since the more inward elements manifest themselves in the face, the face is what determines the major regions. 143. But the idea that the east is in front of angels wherever they turn their faces or bodies this is still harder to grasp in the world, since any direction may be in front of a person on earth, depending on which way he turns. So we will explain this, too. Angels, like people on earth, turn and direct their faces wherever they wish, but for them the east is still always before their eyes. But the turns angels make are not like the turns people on
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earth make, being in fact from a different source. They look alike, but they are pot. The dominant love is the source. From it derive all delineations for angels and for spirits. For as stated above, their more inward elements really are turned toward their common centerin heaven, therefore, toward the Lord as the sun. As a result, since (a) the love is inescapably in front of their more inward elements, and (b) the face arises from these elements, being actually their outward form, the love that dominates is always in front of the face. In the heavens, then, this is the Lord as the sun, since He is the source of their love. And because the Lord is with angels in His love, it is the Lord who causes them to focus on Him whichever way they turn. There is no way at this point to make these matters clearer; but in subsequent chapters, particularly on the subjects of representations and manifestations, and time and space in heaven, they will be presented to the understanding more clearly. The phenomenon of angels constantly having the Lord before their faces is one I have been granted to know and observe from a good deal of experience. While I have been in company with angels, my attention has been drawn to the Lords presence before my face. Even though it was not seen, it was perceived in the light. Angels too have often asserted the truth of this. Because the Lord is constantly before angels faces, people on earth say that those who believe in Him and love Him have God before their eyes and faces, look to Him, and see Him. Such human idioms come from the spiritual world, for many elements of human speech originate there, though man does not know that this is their source. 144. The existence of this kind of turning ranks among heavens wonders. For many people there can be in one place, one turning his face and body one way and another another way, and yet all of them will see the Lord in front of them. Each will have the south to his right, the north to his left, and the west behind him. It also ranks among heavens wonders that, even though all the angels view is toward the east, they still have a view toward the other three regions. This view, though, stems from their more inward sight, which is a property of thought. It also ranks among heavens wonders that no one is allowed to stand behind someone else and look at the back of his head. This confuses the inflow of the good and the true that come from the Lord. 145. Angels see the Lord one way, and the Lord sees angels another way. Angels see the Lord with their eyes, while the Lord sees angels in the forehead. The reason for singling out the forehead is that the forehead corresponds to love. The Lord flows into their intending through their love; He makes Himself visible through their discernment, to which the eyes correspond. 146. In the heavens that make up the Lords celestial kingdom, the major regions are not the same as the ones in the heavens that make up His spiritual kingdom, the reason being that to the angels in His celestial kingdom the Lord is seen as the sun, while to the angels in His spiritual kingdom He is seen as the moon, and the east is where the Lord is seen. The distance between the sun and the moon in heaven is thirty degrees, so the offset of the regions is the same. The division of heaven into two kingdoms called the celestial kingdom and the spiritual kingdom, is described in its own chapter (nn. 20-28), as is the Lords appearance in the celestial kingdom as the sun and in the spiritual kingdom as the moon (n. 118). Still, heavens regions are not confused by this phenomenon, since spiritual angels cannot ascend to celestial angels, nor the latter come down to the former (see above, n. 35). 147. This shows what the Lords presence is like in the heavens. Namely, it is everywhere; it is with each individual involved in the good and the true that emanate from Him, and therefore it is
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with angels in whatever belongs to Itself (as stated above, n. 12). Angels perception of the Lords presence takes place in their more inward elements. From these elements their eyes see; so they see Him outside themselves, there being no interruption. This enables us to decide how to understand the Lords being in them and their being in the Lord, as in the Lords words, Dwell in Me, and I in you. (John 15:4) Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood dwells in Me, and I in Mm. (John 6:56) The Lords flesh means The Divine-Good, and blood means the Divine-True. 148. All the people in the heavens dwell in different areas according to the major regions. To the east and west live the people who are involved in the good of love-to the east the ones in clear perception, to the west the ones in veiled perception. To the south and north dwell the ones who are involved in wisdom from loves good to the south the ones in wisdoms clear light, to the north the ones in wisdoms veiled light. The homes of angels in the Lords spiritual kingdom are arranged similarly to those of angels in the Lords celestial kingdom, but with a difference like that between the good of love and the light of the true from what is good. Love in the celestial kingdom is love for the Lord, and the light of the true that comes from it is wisdom. But love in the spiritual kingdom is love toward the neighbor, which is called charity, and the light of the true that comes from it is intelligence, also called faith (see above, n. 23). There is also the difference in the regions, since the regions in the two kingdoms are thirty degrees apart, as stated above (n. 146). 149. Angels dwellings are arranged in similar fashion within each community of heaven. To the east live the people engaged in the greatest degree of love and charity, to the west those in less. To the south live the people in the greatest degree of wisdom and intelligence, to the north those in less. The reason they live in different areas is that every community reflects heaven, and indeed is a heaven in smaller form (see above, nn. 5 1-58). The same holds true of gatherings. They tend toward this arrangement because of heavens form, which enables each individual to know where he belongs. The Lord takes care that there be people of each type in every community, so that heaven may be similar in form throughout. The arrangement of the whole heaven does differ from that of a community the way a larger whole differs from a particular component. For communities toward the east are better than those to the west, and ones to the south better than ones to the north. 150. This is why the major regions in the heavens indicate the kinds of things prevalent among the people living there. Specifically, east means love and its good in clear perception; west the same in veiled perception; south means wisdom and intelligence in clear light, and north the same in veiled light. Since these regions do have this kind of meaning, they have the same meaning in the Words inner or spiritual sense; for the Words inner or spiritual sense accords completely with the phenomena of heaven. 151. The opposite holds true for the people who are in the hells. The people who are there do not look toward the Lord as the sun or the moon. They look away from the Lord toward that darkness that occupies the place of the worlds sun, or toward that gloom that occupies the place of earths moon. Those called genii look toward the darkness that occupies the place of the worlds sun and those called spirits, toward the gloom that occupies the place of earths
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moon. It may be seen above (n. 122) that the worlds sun and earths moon are not visible in the spiritual world, but that a black something, in the opposite direction from heavens sun, occupies the place of its sun, and a gloomy something, in the opposite direction from heavens moon, occupies the place of earths moon. As a result, they have regions directly opposite to heavens regions. Their east is where that dark or gloomy something is, their west toward heavens sun. Their south is on the right and their north on the leftthis too regardless of the way they turn their bodies. Nothing else is possible for them, because every axis of their more inward elements (and therefore every boundary) tends and strives in this one direction. At n. 143 it may be seen that the axis of the more inward elementsand the actual boundary therefore of everything in the other life follows from love. The love that belongs to the people who are in the hells is love of self and love of the world; and these loves are meant by the worlds sun and earths moon (see n. 122). Further, these loves are contrary to love for the Lord and love toward the neighbor. This is why they turn toward darkness, away from the Lord. The homes of the people who are in the hells are also arranged according to their regions. People involved in evil things that stem from love of self range from their east to their west; people involved in evils falsities range from their south to their north. But more on these matters later, in discussing the hells. 152. When an evil spirit enters the company of the good, normally the regions there are disordered, so that the good can barely tell where their east is. I have seen this happen a number of times, and have heard about it from spirits who complained of it. 153. Evil spirits are at times observed to be oriented by heavens regions. At such times, they have intelligence and a perception of what is true, but no affection for what is good. So as soon as they turn back to their own regions, they are without intelligence and perception of what is true. Then they claim that the truths they had heard and perceived were not true, but false. They want falsities to be true as well. As regards this turning, I have been taught that for evil people, only the understanding can be turned in this fashion, not the intending. I have also been taught that this is provided by the Lord, to the end that anyone can see and recognize things that are true, but that no one will accept them unless he is involved in something good. For the good is what accepts truths; what is evil never does. There is a similar situation in regard to man, since he can be corrected by means of truths, though ultimately he cannot be corrected beyond the extent to which he is involved in what is good. This, I have been taught, is why man can likewise be turned toward the Lord; but if he is involved in something evil as to his life, he promptly turns away and strengthens himself in the falsities of his evil against the truths which he had understood and seen. This happens when he thinks by himself on the basis of what lies deeper within himself.

17. CHANGES OF STATE OF ANGELS IN HEAVEN

154. By changes in angels states, we understand their changes in love and faith, hence in wisdom and intelligence, and therefore in their state of life. States are predicated of life and of matters pertaining to life. Since an angelic life is a life of love and faith and of their derivative wisdom and intelligence, state is predicated of these aspects, and reference is made to states
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of love and faith and states of intelligence and wisdom. Let us then proceed to describe how these states change for angels. 155. Angels are not unvaryingly in the same state as to love, nor, consequently, as to wisdom, all their wisdom being from love and proportional to love. Sometimes they are in a state of intense love, sometimes in a state of mild love. This declines by degrees from its maximum to its minimum. When they are at the peak of love, they are in the light and warmth of their life, surrounded by radiance and delight. When they are at the bottom of the scale, they are in shade and cold, or in a shrouded and unpleasant state. They do return from this last state to the first, and so on. These changes follow each other, never exactly the same. These states come in sequence like the daily changing states of light and shade, warmth and cold, or morning, noon, evening, and night in the world, showing an unfailing variety during the year. They even correspondmorning to the state of angels love in full radiance, noon to the state of their wisdom in full radiance, evening to the state of their wisdom veiled, and night to a state of no love or wisdom. Note however that night has no correspondence with the states of people in heaven. There is rather a correspondence with the daybreak that precedes the morning; nights correspondence is with people in hell. This correspondence is why day and year in the Word mean states of life in general, warmth and light meaning love and wisdom, morning the first and highest level of love, noon wisdom in its full light, evening wisdom in its shade, daybreak the veiled condition just before morning, and night the absence of love and wisdom. 156. Along with the states of more inward elements (which pertain to angels love and wisdom), the states of the different things visible to their sight around them change. For the things around them choose a form that accords with the things within them. What these things are, and what they are like, will be described in later chapters, where we discuss representations and appearances in heaven. 157. Every angel undergoes and traverses changes of state like these, and so in general does every community. But each individual in a community does so differently, since individuals differ in love and wisdom. Some, that is, are at the center, in a more perfect state than the surrounding ones out to the borders (see above, nn. 43 and 128). Listing the differences would take too long, since every single one undergoes changes consonant with the quality of his love and faith. As a result, one is in a radiant and joyful state when another is in an obscure and disagreeable state, even within the same community at the same time. This happens differently from one community to another as well. It happens differently in communities of the celestial kingdom than in communities of the spiritual kingdom. Overall, the varieties of their changes of state are like the varieties of kinds of days in different zones on earth. Some are having morning while others are having evening, some warmth while others cold, and vice versa. 158. I have received information from heaven as to why these changes of state occur there. Angels have said that there are many reasons. The first is that anything pleasant about life and heaven (which they get from the love and wisdom the Lord gives) would deteriorate bit by bit if they experienced it without respite, just as happens to people who experience pleasures and comforts without variety. A second reason is that angels have self-images [proprium] just as people on earth do. It is loving themselves, and everyone in heaven is kept away from his self-image. To the extent that they are kept away from it by the Lord, they experience love and wisdom; but to the extent that they are not kept away, they experience love of self. Since everyone loves his own self-image,
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and since it influences him, they have changes of state or fluctuations, in series. A third reason is that this helps perfect them because it is a mean by which they get used to being kept in the experience of love of the Lord, and kept away from love of self. Then too, their perception and awareness of what is good are made more delicate by fluctuations between things pleasant and unpleasant. Angels have also told me that the Lord does not cause their changes of state, because the Lord as the sun is always flowing in with warmth and lightthat is, with love and wisdom. The angels themselves are the reason, because they love their self-images, which is always leading them astray. This was illustrated by comparison with the words sun. Per Se, it is not the cause of changes in states of warmth and cold or light and shade, of individual years and days, since it remains constant. The reason is intrinsic to the earth. 159. I have been shown how the Lord as the sun looks to angels in the celestial kingdom in their first state, their second, and their third. I saw the Lord as the sun, at first a red-gold color, flashing with an indescribable brilliance. I was told that this is how the Lord as the sun looks to angels in their first state. After that, I saw a large cloudy ring around the sun, which began to dim the flashing red-gold color that had caused the original brilliance. I was told that this is how the Lord looks to them in their second state. Then I saw this ring thicken, so that the sun seemed less ruddy. This continued bit by bit until finally it had become virtually white. I was told that this is how the sun looks to people in the third state. After this, I saw this white object move to the left, toward heavens moon, and join with its light, with the result that the moon blazed out immoderately. I was told that this was the fourth state for people in the celestial kingdom, and the first in the spiritual kingdom. I was also told that in both kingdoms, changes of state fluctuate this waynot everywhere at once, but in one community after another, these states, finally, not being precisely periodical, but happening more slowly or more quickly without their noticing. Again, they said that the sun itself undergoes neither such changes nor such movement. It looks that way as changes of state progress on the angels level, since the Lord has an appearance to every individual in keeping with the quality of that individuals state. So He looks ruddy to people who are experiencing intense love, less ruddy and ultimately white as the love wanes. They said that the quality of peoples own state was depicted by the cloudy ring, which superimposed on the sun those apparent variations of flame and light. 160. When angels are in this last statethat is, when they experience their self-image-they begin to feel depressed. I have talked with them while they were in this state, and I have seen the depression. However, they said that they felt hope for a prompt return to their original state to heaven, so to speak; since for them, heaven is being kept away from their self-image. 161. There are changes of state in the hells, too; but these will be described below, in the discussion of hell.

18. TIME IN HEAVEN

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162. Regardless of the fact that everything in heaven happens in sequence and progresses the way things do in the world, still angels have no idea or concept of time and space. This lack is so complete that they simply do not know what time and space are. At this point, we will discuss time in heaven; space will be discussed in its own chapter. 163. The reason angels do not know what time is (although everything progresses in sequence for them the ways things do in the world, so completely that there is no difference), is that there are no years and days in heaven, but changes of state. Wherever there are years and days, there are times. Where there are changes of state, there are only states. 164. The reason for the existence of times in the world is the suns apparent sequential progression from one degree to another, producing the times called seasons of the year. It also seems to travel around the earth and produce the times called times of day. Both these phenomena occur with fixed periods. Heavens sun is different. It does not produce days and years by sequential progression or orbital motion, but apparently causes changes of state. And this does not happen at fixed intervals, as has been shown in the last chapter. This is why angels are incapable of any concept of time, thinking instead in terms of state. It may be seen above (n. 154) what state is. 165. Since angels, unlike people on earth, have no concepts derived from time, they have no concepts about time or about matters involving time. They do not even know what these matters involving time are, such as a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour, today, tomorrow, or yesterday. When angels hear about these things from men (for angels are constantly kept in touch with man by the Lord), they perceive instead state and matters involving state. So mans natural concept is transformed into a spiritual concept among angels. As a result, times in the Word refer to states; and matters involving time, like the ones just listed, refer to their corresponding spiritual matters. 166. A similar principle applies to all the phenomena that occur because of timefor example, to the four seasons of the year, called spring, summer, autumn, and winter. It applies to the four times of day called morning, noon, evening, and night. It applies to the four ages of man called infancy, adolescence, maturity, and old age. It applies to other things that either occur because of time or follow in temporal sequence. Man thinks in terms of time when he thinks about these matters; but an angel thinks in terms of state. Consequently anything temporal in these phenomena on mans level is transformed into a concept of state on the angels level. Spring and morning are transformed into a concept of a state of love and wisdom as in the first state of angels. Summer and midday are changed into a concept of love and wisdom as in their second condition; autumn and evening, to the third; night and winter, to a concept of the kind of condition prevailing in hell. This is why times in the Word refer to matters such as these (see above, n. 155). This shows how natural things in a persons thought become spiritual with angels accompanying him. 167. Since angels have no idea of time, they have a different concept of eternity that people on earth do. Angels see in eternity an infinite state, not an infinite time. I was thinking about eternity once, and using a time-concept I could see what to eternity meant, but not what from eternity meant. So I could not see what God had been doing before creation, from eternity. When this began to distress me, I was lifted into a sphere of heaven, and therefore into the perception of eternity which angels have. Then the light dawned, that we should not think about eternity on the basis of time, but should start from state. Then we would
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grasp what from eternity means-which is what actually happened to me. 168. Angels who talk with people on earth never use the natural concepts proper to man, all derived from time, space, matter, and the like. They use spiritual ideas, all derived from states and their various changes within angels and outside them. The angelic concepts, however, which are spiritual, change instantly and spontaneously into natural concepts proper to man, corresponding precisely to the spiritual ones, when they flow into the individual. Neither an-gels nor men are aware that this is happening, yet all heavens inflow into people on earth is of this kind. Some angels were once let intimately into my thoughts, all the way into the natural ones that had considerable content derived from time and space. But because they did not understand anything at that juncture, they quickly drew back. After they had drawn back, I heard them say that they had been in darkness. [2] I have been made aware by experience of the nature of angels ignorance of time. There was a particular person from heaven whose character was such that he could have access even into natural ideas, the kind proper to man. I talked with him later person to person, so to speak. At first he did not understand what it was that I was calling time, so I had to explain to him in detail how the sun seems to travel around our earth, producing years and days, so that the years are divided into four seasons, also into months and weeks, with days divided into twentyfour hours. I explained that these happen over and over at fixed periods, which is the basis of times. He was amazed to hear this, and told me he had not known about matters like these, but he did know what states were. [3] In the course of our conversation, I also said that the absence of time in heaven is known in the world; people do talk as though they knew. For they refer to those who die as leaving the temporal and as going beyond time, meaning that they have left the world. I mentioned too that some people are aware that times originate in states, because times are wholly relative to their states of affection. They seem short when people are involved in pleasant and happy affections, long when they are involved in unpleasant or disagreeable ones; in states of hope or expectation they seem of various lengths. As a result, scholars are investigating the nature of time and space, some even knowing that time pertains to the natural person. 169. A natural person may believe thai his thinking would cease if concepts of time, space, and matter were removed, since all mans thinking is based on them. It would help him to realize, though, that thoughts are limited and restricted to the extent that they draw upon time, space, and matter. They are not limited, and they expand, to the extent that they do not draw upon these, since the mind is proportionally raised above bodily and worldly matters. This is where angels get their wisdom; this is why it might well be called unfathomable because it does not fit into concepts composed solely from things physical and worldly.

19. REPRESENTATIONS AND APPEARANCES IN HEAVEN

170. Anyone who does his thinking from natural illumination [lumen] alone cannot grasp the idea that anything in heaven could be like anything on earth. This is because he has thought and concluded from that illumination that angels are only minds, that minds are sorts of airy vapors, and that they therefore do not have the senses that man does-no eyes, that is; and without eyes
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there are no objects of sight. However, angels have all the senses man has, and in fact far more sensitive ones; for the light in which they see is far clearer than the light in which man sees. See above (nn. 73-77) on angels being people in most perfect form, and enjoying all the senses; on light in heaven being far clearer than light in the world, see nn. 126-132. 171. There is no brief way to describe the nature of the things visible in the heavens to angels. They are largely similar to things on earth, but more perfect in form and more abundant. The occurrence of such objects in heaven is confirmed by what the prophets saw. Ezekiel, for example, saw the things relating to the new temple and the new earth described in chapters 4048; Daniel the things from chapter 7 to chapter 12; John the things in Revelation from the first chapter to the last. And others saw things described in both the historical and the prophetic parts of the Word. Things like these became visible to them when heaven was opened to them; and heaven is said to be opened when the more inward sightthe sight of mans spiritis opened. For what is in the heavens cannot be seen by the eyes of mans body, but by the eyes of his spirit. When the Lord pleases, these are opened, as the person is taken out of the natural illumination in which he is engaged because of his bodys senses, and is raised into spiritual light, in which he is engaged because of his spirit. It is in this latter light that I have seen things in the heavens. 172. But the things one sees in the heavens, even though they are largely similar to things on earth, are dissimilar in essence. For the things in heaven arise from heavens sun, while the things on earth arise from the worlds sun. The things that arise from heavens sun are called spiritual; while the things that arise from the worlds sun are called natural. 173. The things that occur in the heavens do not occur in the same way as things on earth do. In the heavens, all things arise from the Lord, according to their correspondence with angels more inward elements. Angels do have more inward and more outward elements. The contents of their more inward elements relate to love and faithto intending and discernment therefore, since intending and discernment are their receiving vessels. Their more outward elements, though, correspond to their more inward ones. This correspondence of more inward to move outward things has been presented above (nn. 87-115). This may be illustrated by what has already been said in the chapter, Light and Warmth in Heaven. The equivalence of angels warmth and the quality of their love, of their light and the quality of their wisdom, is set forth in nn. 128-134. A similar principle applies to the other things that present themselves to angels senses. 174. When I have been allowed to associate with angels, I have seen things there exactly as I have seen things in the world, so vividly that I had no way of knowing that I was not in the world, in some kings hail. I have talked with angels like one person with another. 175. Since all the things that correspond to more inward things actually re-present them, they are called representations. Since they do vary depending on the states of the deeper things in the angels, they are called appearances. This is despite the fact that the things visible to angels eyes in the heavens, the things perceived by their senses, are visible and perceived just as realistically as things on earth are by man actually with far more clarity, crispness, and vividness. The appearances that occur in heaven are called real appearances, because they do really occur. There are also unreal appearances; they are things that do become visible, but do not correspond to more inward things. But more on these later.
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176. I should like to cite just one example to illustrate what kinds of things are visible to angels in consequence of correspondences. To angels involved in intelligence, there appear gardens and parks full of every kind of tree and flower. The trees are set in a very beautiful design, twining into arched entrances opening through, and with walks here and there. Everything is so beautiful that there is no way to describe it. People stroll there who are engaged in intelligence. They gather flowers, make wreaths, and adorn little children with them. There are kinds of trees and flowers there unknown in the world in fact, kinds that cannot occur. There are fruits on these trees reflecting the good of the love that engages these intelligent angels. They see this kind of thing because a garden and a park (as well as fruit trees and flowers) correspond to intelligence and wisdom. The presence of such things in heaven is known on earth, but only to people involved in what is good, people who have not smothered heavens light within them with natural illumination and its deceptions. For on the subject of heaven, they both think and say that such things exist there as the ear has never heard, nor the eye seen.

20. THE CLOTHES ANGELS ARE SEEN WEARING

177. Since angels are people, living together as people on earth do, they have clothes, houses, and many similar things. But there is this difference, that since angels are in a more perfect state, everything they have is more perfect. As angelic wisdom surpasses human wisdom so much as to be indescribable, so too does everything they perceive, everything presented to them. For everything they perceive, everything presented to them, corresponds to their wisdom (see above, n. 173). 178. Like everything else, the clothes angels wear correspond, and truly exist because they correspond (see above, n. 175). Their clothes correspond to their intelligence. So all the people in heaven are seen dressed in accord with their intelligence; and since one person surpasses another in intelligence (see nn. 43,128) one will have more outstanding clothes than another. The most intelligence have clothes that gleam as if aflame, some radiant as if alight. The less intelligent have shining white clothes without radiance, and those still less intelligent have clothes of various colors. The angels of the inmost heaven, though, are naked. 179. Because angels clothes correspond to their intelligence, they correspond to what is true; for all intelligence comes from the Divine-True. So it makes no difference whether you say that angels are dressed in keeping with intelligence or in keeping with the Divine-True. The reason the clothes of some gleam as if aflame and some are radiant as if alight, is that flame corresponds to what is good and light to what is true. The reason the clothes of some are shining and white, without radiance, and some are of various colors, is that the Divine-Good and the Divine-True are less luminous, and are variously accepted, among the less intelligent. Shining and white correspond to what is true, and colors to variants of it. The reason angels of the inmost heaven are naked is that they are in a state of innocence, and innocence corresponds to nakedness. 180. Since angels wear clothes in heaven, they have appeared wearing clothes when seen in the world, like those seen by the prophets, and those seen at the Lords tomb, whose
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faces were lightning, and whose garments were gleaming and white. (Matthew 28:3, Mark 16:5, Luke 24:4, John 20:12f) and like those seen in heaven by John, whose clothes were linen, and white. (Rev. 4:4, 19:14) And because intelligence comes from the Divine-True, The Lords clothes, when He was transfigured, were gleaming, and white as light. (Matthew 17:2, Mark 9:3, Luke 9:29) The equivalence of light and the Divine-True emanating from the Lord has been presented above (n. 129). This is why clothes in the Word refer to things true, and to resulting intelligence. So in John, The people who have not defiled their clothes will walk with me in white, because they are worthy. Whoever conquers will be clothed in white garments.... (Rev. 3:4, 5) Blessed is the man who keeps watch, and cares for his clothing. (Rev. 16:15) On the subject of Jerusalem, meaning the church that is involved in what is true, in Isaiah, Misc, put on strength, 0 Zion; put on your beautiful garments, 0 Jerusalem. (Is. 52:1) and in Ezekiel, Jerusalem, I have girded you with linen, and enfolded you with silk, your clothes are of linen and silk. (Ez. 16:10, 13) plus many other places. The person who is not involved in things true is called not wearing a wedding garment in Matthew: When the king entered... he saw a man not wearing a wedding garment, and said to him, Friend, how have you come in without a wedding garment? Therefore he was expelled into the outer darkness. (Matthew 22:11-13) The wedding house means heaven and the church, by reason of the Lords bond with them through His Divine-True. The Lord is therefore called the Bridegroom and Husband in the Word, and heaven and the church, the Bride and Wife. 181. It has been proposed that angels clothes do not simply seem to be clothes, but truly are clothes. This is confirmed by the fact that they not only see them, but feel them to the touch. Further, they have a number of clothes, they take them off and put them on, they put away the ones they are not using, and take them out again in order to use them. Their wearing different clothes I have witnessed thousands of times. I have asked where these clothes came from, and they said they were from the Lord, that they were given to them, and that at times they are clothed without their knowing it. They also said that their clothes changed with their changes of state, that in the first and second states they had gleaming and shining clothes, and in the third and fourth somewhat darkened clothes. This resulted from correspondence, since they undergo changes of state as to intelligence and wisdom (on these matters, see above, nn. 154-161). 182. Inasmuch as everyones clothes in the spiritual world are in accord with his intelligence (in accord, then, with the truths that produce intelligence), people in hell, lacking truths, are presented clothed, but only in torn, dirty, offensive clothes, each in accord with his folly. They can wear nothing else. The Lord provides that they be clothed, so that they may not be seen naked.

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21. ANGELS HOMES AND HOUSES

183. Since there are communities in heaven, and angels live like people, angels have homes. These, like their clothes, vary depending on the individuals state of life. There are splendid ones for angels in a more deserving state, and less splendid ones for angels in a lower state. I have talked with angels about the homes in heaven a number of times. I have told them that nowadays hardly anyone believes that they have homes or housessome because they do not see them, some because they do not know that angels are people, and some because they think the angelic heaven is the sky above them, visible to their eyes. Since this looks empty, and since they think angels are airy shapes, they draw the conclusion that angels live in the upper atmosphere. Nor do they grasp the fact that there are the same kinds of thing in the spiritual world as there are in the natural world, since they have no knowledge of the spiritual. [2] Angels have told me that they know this kind of ignorance is prevalent in the world nowadays, and, incredibly, especially in the church. In the church it is more characteristic of the intelligent than of those referred to as the simple. The angels further affirmed the possibility of knowing from the Word that angels are people, seeing that the ones who have been seen have been seen as people. This was also the way the Lord was seen, who took to Himself everything of His that was Human. According to angels, then, since they are people they have houses and homes. They do not fly in the air, as the ignorance of some people would have it (an ignorance which angels refer to as madness), nor are they winds, in spite of the fact that they are called spirits. People can grasp this if only they extend their thinking about angels and spirits beyond their basic preconceptions. This happens when they do not place in question or under direct consideration whether it is so. For there is a general idea, common to all people, that angels are in the human form, that they have dwellings called heavenly homes that are more splendid than homes on earth. But this general idea, which results from the inflow of heaven, promptly collapses into nothing when whether it is so is made the center of attention and thinking. This happens primarily with learned people who through their self-conscious intelligence have closed off heaven and the path of its light. [3] The same thing happens with belief in mans living after death. People who talk about this, and do not also think pedantically about the soul or doctrinally about the resumption of the flesh, believe that man will live after death. They believe he will dwell among angels if he has lived well, that he will see magnificent sights and feel joys. But the, moment someone focuses on the doctrine of resumption of the flesh, or on some theory about the soul, and his thinking encounters the question of whether a soul like this exists (hence whether it is so), then his original idea is put to flight. 184. But it would be better to interrupt with samples from experience. Whenever I have talked face to face with angels I have been with them in their dwellings. Their dwellings are just like the dwellings on earth which we call homes, except that they are more beautiful. They have rooms, suites, and bedrooms, all in abundance. They have courtyards, and are surrounded by gardens, flowerbeds, and lawns. www.universe-people.com Where people are closely associated, the houses are adjoining, one beside another, arranged in the form of a city with avenues, streets, and squares just like cities on our earth. I have been allowed to go walking through them, to sightsee, and on occasion to enter homes. This has happened to me when I was fully awake, when my inner sight was opened.
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185. I have seen palaces of heaven so noble as to defy description. The higher parts glowed as if they were made of pure gold, the lower as though made of precious gems; each palace was more splendid than the last. Inside, the samethe rooms were decorated with accessories such that words and arts fail to describe them. Outside, on the south prospect, there were parks where everything likewise glowed, with here and there leaves gleaming like silver and fruit like gold. The flowers in their plots formed virtual rainbows. At the borders more and more palaces were visible, as far as the eye could see. The designs of heavens buildings are so perfect that you would say they represent the very essence of the art; and small wonder, since the art of architecture comes from heaven. The angels told me that these and countless other such things still more perfect are set before their eyes by the Lord. Yet these please their minds even more than their eyes. This is because they see correspondences in the details, and through them see things Divine. 186. Now in regard to correspondences, I have been taught that it is not just the palace or home that corresponds to what angels have more deeply within them from the Lordit is each and everything within them and outside. I have been taught that the house itself corresponds, broadly, to their good, the particular things in the houses to different elements that constitute that good, and the outdoor things to true elements that stem from what is good, and to perceptions and insights. Since they do correspond to the good and true elements in angels from the Lord, they correspond to their love. As a result, they correspond to wisdom and intelligence, since love is a matter of what is good, wisdom of what is good and what is true together, and intelligence of what is true stemming from what is good. This sort of thing, I have been taught, is what angels perceive when they look at their houses, the contents, and the surroundings. This is also why these things delight and move their minds more than their eyes. 187. This has clarified the reason the Lord called Himself the Temple that is in Jerusalem (John 2:19, 21), and why the New Jerusalem appeared made out of pure gold, with gates of pearl and foundations of precious stones (Rev. 21). The reason was that the Temple represented the Lords Divine-Human. The New Jerusalem means the church that was to be founded in the future, the twelve gates the true things that lead to what is good, and the foundations the true elements on which it rests. 188. The angels who make up the Lords celestial kingdom live for the most part in the higher regions that look like mountains rising from the earth. The angels who make up the Lords spiritual kingdom live in less lofty regions that look like hills. The angels in the lowest heavens live in regions that look like rocky crags. These things too occur by reason of correspondences, since more inward things correspond to higher ones and more outward to lower. As a result, mountains in the Word mean celestial love; hills mean spiritual love; and rocks, faith. 189. There are angels who do not live in communities, but apart, home by home. These live in the center of heaven, because they are the best of angels. 190. The homes angels live in are not constructed, as are homes in the world, but are given freely to them by the Lordto each in accordance with his acceptance of what is good and true. They change slightly in keeping with changes of the state of their more inward elements (on these, see above, nn. 154-160). Angels regard all their possessions as gifts from the Lord, and are given whatever they need.

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22. SPACE IN HEAVEN

191. In spite of the fact that everything in heaven seems to be in a place and in space just like things in the world, angels have no concept or idea of place or space. As this can only look like a paradox, I should like to bring it out into the light; for it has a major bearing. 192. All journeys in the spiritual world occur by means of changes of the state of more inward things, to the point that journeys are simply changes of state. This is how I have been brought into the heavens by the Lord; this is how I have been brought to planets in the universe. My spirit has been brought, while my body stayed in one place.. This is how all angels travel. So they do not have any spatial intervals, and without spatial intervals, there are no spaces. Instead, there are states and changes of state. 193. Since this is how journeys occur, nearness are clearly similarities, and distances dissimilarities, in the state of more inward elements. Consequently, people who are in similar states are near each other, and people who are in dissimilar states are far apart. There are no spaces in heaven except outward states that correspond to inner ones. There is no other source of the various heavens distinctness, of that of communities in each heaven or of individuals in each community. This also gives rise to the complete separation of the hells from the heavens, since they are in opposite states. 194. This is the reason too that in the spiritual world one person becomes present to another if only the other earnestly desires his presence. For by so doing he sees the other in thought, and puts himself in his state. Conversely, one person is taken from another as far as he turns away from him. Since all turning away stems from opposition of affections and disagreement of thoughts, large groups of people in a single region will be visible for as long as they are in accord. But the moment they disagree, they vanish. 195. When anyone travels from one place to anotherbe it within his community, within his own grounds, in his gardens, or to others outside his communityhe gets there more quickly if he is willing and more slowly if he is unwilling. The route itself becomes longer or shorter in keeping with his willingness, even while it remains the same mute. I have often witnessed this, and marvelled at it. Again, this makes it clear that distances (and therefore spaces themselves) exist solely in keeping with the states of the more inward elements of angels. And this being the case, no concept or idea or space can find its way into their thinking, even though spaces exist for them just as much as they do in the world. 196. This can be understood more clearly by considering mans thoughts, in that spaces do not exist for them. For whatever a person earnestly gives his mental attention to becomes, so to speak, present to him. Further, we realize on reflection that distances are visually perceived only by means of intervening objects on earth, seen all at once, or from the realization that we know a particular thing to be a given distance away. This results from the existence of a continuum, and in a continuum distances are perceived only through items that are discontinuous. This is all the more true for angels, since their sight is coordinated with their thought and their thought with their affection; also because things near and far appear and vary in keeping with
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the condition of the more inward elements of the angels, as mentioned above. 197. As a result, places and distances in the Word (and everything that depends at all upon space) mean things which involve state. This includes distances, near, far, paths, roads, journeys, miles, and furlongs; plains, fields, gardens, cities, and avenues; motion, and various measurements; long, wide, high, and deep; and countless other things. For most of the things man has in his thought from the world derive something from space and time. I should like to interject here only the meaning of length, breadth, and height in the Word. [2] In the world, long and wide are applied to things spatially long and widelikewise high. But in heaven, where there is no spatial thinking, length means state in respect to what is good, width means state in respect to what is true, and height means their being distinguished as to their level (see n. 38). The reason these three dimensions have this kind of meaning is that length in heaven is the dimension from east to west, where people are who are involved in the good content of love. Width in heaven is the dimension from south to north, where people are who are involved in what is true arising from what is good (see above, n. 148). Height in heaven applies to either in respect to its level. This is why length, width, and height have this. kind of meaning in the Word. Note, for example, Ezekiel 40-48, where measurements of length, width, and height are used to describe the new temple and the new earth, with courtyards, suites, doors, gateways, windows, suburbsall of which refer to a new church and the good and true elements in it. Why else would all these measurements be listed? [3] The New Jerusalem is described in a similar vein in Revelation as follows: The city lies foursquare, with its length equal to its width. The city was measured with a reed, the result being twelve thousand furlongs: the length, breadth, and height are equal. (Rev. 21:16) Here, since the New Jersualem means a new church, its dimensions mean what belongs to the church. Length means the good content of its love; width means the true that stems from that good; and height means the good and the true as far as degrees are concerned. Twelve thousand furlongs means everything good and true taken together. Why else would the height be twelve thousand furlongs, like the length and the breadth? One can see in David that width in the Word means what is true: Jehovah, You have not imprisoned me in the hand of the enemy, You have set my feet in a wide place. (Psalm 31:9) I called upon Jab out of a narrow place; He answered me in breadth. (Psalm 118:5) Elsewhere, too, as in Isaiah 8:8 and Habakkuk 1:6; and in other passages besides. 198. All this makes it possible to see that in heaven, even though there are spaces as there are in the world, nothing there is evaluated by spatial criteria, only by criteria of state. Spaces cannot even be measured there the way they are in the world. They can only be seen as a result of the state, and in accord with the state of angels more inward elements. 199. The precise primary reason is that the Lord is present with each individual in proportion to love and faith, with everything seeming near or far in proportion to His presence, this being the way everything in heaven is prescribed. This is how angels come to have wisdom, because this is how they come to have outreach of thought, and how there occurs a communication of all the elements in the heavens. In short, this is how they think spiritually, not naturally like men.

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23. HEAVENS FORM, WHICH PATTERNS ASSOCIATIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS THERE

200. To some extent, the nature of heavens form can be deduced from things described in the preceding sections. For example, heaven is alike in greatest and smallest elements (n. 72), so that each community is a heaven in smaller form and each angel a heaven in smallest form (nn. 51-58). As the entire heaven reflects a single person, each community of heaven reflects a person in smaller form, and each angel in smallest form (nn. 59-77). In the middle are the wisest, around them to the circumference the less wise; and this holds true of each community (n. 43). In heaven, angels involved in the good content of love live on the east-west axis, and angels involved in things true because of what is good live on the south-north axis, which holds true for each community (nn. 148-149). These things are all in keeping with heavens form, so the general nature of heavens form can be deduced from them. 201. It helps to know the nature of heavens form, because it patterns not only all associations but also all communications as well. Further, since it patterns all communication, it patterns all outreach of thoughts and affections, and therefore all the intelligence and wisdom that angels have. This is why the degree to which a person is in the form of heavenis a form of heaven determines how wise he is. It amounts to the same thing whether you say in the form of heaven or in the order of heaven. For the form of anything stems from an order and follows it. 202. Let us begin by saying something about what being in heavens form actually is. Man is created after heavens model and after the worlds model (see above, n. 57). His inner part is created after heavens model and his outer after the worlds. It makes no difference whether you say according to the form or after the model. However, since man has destroyed heavens model (hence its form) in himself by evil elements of his intention and consequent false elements of thought, and has introduced the model and form of hell instead, what lies within him is closed off from the moment of birth. This is why man, unlike every kind of animal, is born into complete ignorance. In fact, for the model or form of heaven to be restored to him, he needs to be taught about matters relating to order. For as already said, form follows order. The Word contains all the laws of Divine order, since the laws of Divine order are the commandments it contains. To the extent that a person knows them and lives by them, what lies within him is set free. Then the order or model of heaven is formed anew in him. We can see from this what being in the form of heaven meansnamely, living by the contents of the Word. 203. To the extent that anyone is in the form of heaven, he is in heaven; in fact he is a heaven in smallest form (n. 57). Therefore he participates in intelligence and wisdom to the same extent. For as stated above, all the thought of his understanding and all the affection of his intention reach out round about into heaven in keeping with its form, communicating marvelously with the communities there, and they in turn with him. 112] There are people who believe that thoughts and affections do not really reach out around them, but are within them. This is because they see within themselves, not farther away, the things they are thinking about. They are quite mistaken, however. For just as eyesight has an outreach to remote objects, and responds to the arrangement of the things it sees in that
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outreach, so the more inward sight proper to the understanding has an outreach in the spiritual world (although, for reasons given above, n. 196, man has no awareness of this). The only difference is that eyesight is affected naturally, being made of materials from the natural world; while the sight of the understanding is affected spiritually, being made of materials from the spiritual world, which all have to do with what is good and true. The reason man does not know this is that he is unaware of the existence of a light that enlightens his understanding. Yet apart from the light that enlightens his understanding, man could not think at all (on this light, see above, nn. 126-132). [3] There was a particular spirit who believed that he thought independently, without any outreach beyond himself or consequent communication with communities beyond him. In order for him to learn that he was wrong, his communication with neighboring communities was suspended. As a result, he was not only deprived of thought, he actually collapsed as though he were deadthough he did wave his arms like a newborn baby. After a while, communication was restored to him; and gradually, as it was restored, he came back to the state of his own thought. [4] So the other spirits who witnessed this admitted that all thought and affection flow in according to communcation. And since this is true of all thought and affection, it is true of all life; for all of a persons life rests in the ability to think and feel, or (which is the same thing) to understand and to intend. 204. It must be realized, though, that intelligence and wisdom vary from person to person depending on the communication. People whose intelligence and wisdom are fashioned from things genuinely true and good are in touch with communities according to heavens form. People whose intelligence and wisdom are fashioned not from things genuinely true and good but still from things in harmony with them have an intermittent communication, only more or less coherent, since it is not a communication with communities in the sequence proper to heavens form. But people who do not participate in intelligence and wisdom, owing to their participation in falsities stemming from what is evil, are in communication with communities in hell. The extent of the outreach is proportional to the fixity of their participation. It should also be realized that this communication with communities is not a communication with them that reaches the conscious perception of their inhabitants. It is rather a communication with their quality, the quality in which they participate and which emanates from them. 205. All the people in heaven are connected according to spiritual relationships, which have to do with the good and the true in their proper pattern. This is true of the entire heaven, of each community, and of each household. As a result, angels involved in like good and truth recognize each other the way relatives and kinfolk do on earth, just as though they had known each other from infancy. There is a similar connection of the good and true elements that make up wisdom and intelligence within each individual angel. These recognize each other in similar fashion; and as they recognize each other, they join together. Consequently, people whose good and true elements are assembled according to heavens pattern see successive things in sequence, and see how they fit together over a wide range beyond themselves. This does not hold true for people whose good and true elements are not assembled according to heavens form. 206. This is what form is like within each heaven, patterning the communication and outreach of thoughts and affections for angels, and patterning therefore their intelligence and wisdom. But the communication of one heaven with another is differentthat is the communication of the third or inmost heaven with the intermediate one, and the communication of these two with the
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first or outermost one. Communications between heavens, for that matter, should be called inflow rather than>~Ommunication. It will be discussed forthwith. The existence of three heavens, distinct from each other, has been presented above in the appropriate chapter (nn. 2940). 207. From the relative positions of the heavens, it is possible to conclude that there is not a communication from one to another, but rather an inflow. The third or inmost heaven is high above, the second or intermediate is lower, and the first or outermost is still lower. All the communities of each heaven have this same arrangement, as for example the ones in elevated areas that look like mountains (n. 188). At their summits live angels of the inmost heaven, lower down those of the second, and lower still those of the outermost. This holds true universally, for areas of high elevation and areas not. A community of a higher heaven is not in touch with a community of a lower heaven except by way of correspondences (see above, n. 100); and communication by way Of correspondences is what is called inflow. 208. One heaven is connected with another, or a community of one heaven with a community of another, by the Lord alone through direct and indirect inflow. The direct inflow is from Him Himself; the indirect is through the higher heavens in sequence to the lower ones. Because the connection of the heavens through inflow is from the Lord alone, every possible precaution is taken lest any angels of a higher heaven look down into a lower heaven and talk with anyone there. The moment this happens, the angel loses his intelligence and wisdom. As to the reason for this, each angel has three levels of life, like the three levels of heaven. People who are in the inmost heaven have their third or inmost level opened, their second and first levels closed. People who are in the intermediate heaven have their second level opened, their first and third levels closed. And people who are in the outermost heaven have their first level opened, their second and third level closed. So the moment an angel of the third heaven looks down into a community of the second heaven and talks with someone there, his third level is closed. Once it is closed, he has lost his wisdom. For his wisdom is located on the third level; he has none on the second or first. This is the intent of the Lords words in Matthew: The person who is on the roof, let him not come down to get anything that is in his house; and the person who is in the field, let him not turn back to get his clothes. (Matthew 24:17f.) and in Luke: In that day let the person on the roof, whose vessels are in the house, not go down to bring them up; and the person who is in the field, let him not turn backward: remember Lots wife. (Luke 17:31f.) 209. There is no such thing as an inflow from the lower heavens into the higher ones, this being in violation of order. Rather, the inflow is from the higher heavens into the lower ones. The wisdom of angels of a higher heaven surpasses the wisdom of angels of a lower one by a ratio on the order of thousands to one. This is why angels of a lower heaven cannot talk with angels of a higher one. In fact, they do not see them when they look at them. Their heaven looks like something cloudy overhead. On the other hand, angels of a higher heaven can see ones who are in a lower one, but engaging in conversations with them is not allowedonly with loss of their wisdom, as already stated. 210. The thoughts, affections, and consequent words of angels of the inmost heaven are never grasped in the intermediate one, since they are so transcendent. But when it pleases the Lord, something from that heaven appears flame-like in the lower heavens. Corresponding phenomena in the intermediate heaven appear in the outermost heaven as something bright,
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sometimes as a shining multicolored cloud. From the cloud itself, its rise, descent, and form, angels are aware for a while of what is being said there. 211. This may serve to show what heavens form is like, that in the inmost heaven it is most perfect of all, in the intermediate heaven perfect but on a lower level, and in the outermost heaven on a lower level still; also that the form of one heaven continually derives from another through an inflow from the Lord. But there is no understanding what communication through inflow is like without knowing what degrees of height are like, and knowing that there is a difference between these degrees and degrees of length and width. On the nature of these two kinds of degrees, (see n. 38). 212. As for the details of heavens form and the way it moves and flows, this is incomprehensible even to angels. Some of this can be conceptualized by means of the form of all the parts of the human body, surveyed and analyzed by someone both precise and wise. For in the appropriate sections above, we have shown that the whole heaven reflects a single person (nn. 59-72) and that all the parts in a person correspond to the heavens (nn. 87-102). Just how incomprehensible this form is, how impossible to sort out, one may roughly gather simply from the nerve fibers that connect each and every part. Their nature, the way they move and flow in the brain, never is visible, for the countless elements involved are so interwoven that, taken together, they look like a pliant, continuous mass. But in fact each thing and everything that belongs to intention and understanding flows along the fibers by most distinct paths into actions. One can see how these fibers gather again in the body by noting the various plexuses the cardiac, the mesenteric, and othersand also the nodes called ganglia, where many fibers enter from all directions, intermix, and leave differently connected for their functions. This happens again and again. In addition, similar features are to be found in every inner part,member, organ, and muscle. Anyone who surveys matters such as these and their wonders with a knowing eye will be quite stunned. Yet what the eye sees is only a little; what it does not see is even more marvelous because it is of a more inward nature. The correspondence of this form with heavens form can be clearly seen in the way all the elements of intention and understanding work within that form and in keeping with it. In fact, whatever a person intends slips down through that form into act, and whatever he thinks moves through the fibers from beginning to end, resulting in sensation. And since this is the form of thought and intention, it is the form of intelligence and wisdom. This is the form that corresponds to heavens form. This enables us to know that this is the form through which all the affection and thought of angels reach out, and to know that they participate in intelligence and wisdom to the extent that they are in this form. On the derivation of this form from the Lords Divine - Human, see above (nn. 78-86). This material has been appended to make known the fact that heavens form is of such nature that even in its general principles it can never be exhaustively probed, such that it is incomprehensible even to angels, as already stated.

24. GOVERNMENTS IN HEAVEN

213. In view of the fact that heaven is divided into communities, the larger ones consisting of several hundred thousand angels (n. 50), with the members of each community being involved
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in like good but not in like wisdom (n. 43), there are necessarily governments there. For order must be kept, and matters of order cared for. But governments in the heavens are of different kinds. They are not the same in the communities that constitute the Lords celestial kingdom as they are in the communities that constitute the Lords spiritual kingdom. They vary according to the forms of service appropriate to each community. Still, there is no government in heaven that is not a government of mutual love; the government of mutual love is heavenly government. 214. Government in the Lords celestial kingdom is called justice, because everyone there is involved in the good content of love to the Lord from the Lord. Any action arising from this love is called just. Government there belongs to the Lord alone. He Himself guides them, and in life-related matters teaches them. The true things called judgments are written in their hearts. Everyone knows and perceives and sees them. So legal points never come to court, only life-related questions of justice. The less wise consult the wiser about these matters, and the wise consult the Lord and bring back the replies. Their heaven, or the center of their joy, is living justly from the Lord. 215. Government in the Lords spiritual kingdom is called judgmer~7 because they are involved in spiritual good, which is that of charity toward the neighbor. This good is essentially true, and what is true is a property of judgment just as what is good is a property of justice. These angels are guided by the Lord too, but indirectly (n. 208). As a result they have officials, fewer or more depending on the need of the community involved. They also have laws, which they abide by in their life together. The officials administer everything according to the laws. They understand them because they are wise; and in cases of doubt, they are enlightened by the Lord. 216. Since government on the basis of what is good (the kind that exists in the Lords celestial kingdom) is called justice, and government on the basis of what is true (the kind that exists in the Lords spiritual kingdom) is called judgment, justice and judgment are mentioned in the Word in connection with heaven and the church. Justice means celestial good and judgment spiritual good which, as already stated, is essentially true. Note the following passages: There will be no end to peace on the throne Of David and on His kingdom until it is established, and until it is founded on judgment and justice from now even till eternity. (Isaiah 9:7) David here means the Lord, and His kingdom means heaven, as we can see from the following passage: I will raise up for David a just Branch, and he will reign as king, and act discerningly, and do judgment and justice in the land. (Jeremiah 23:5) Let Jehovah be exalted, because He dwells on high: He has filled Zion with judgment and justice. (Isaiah 33:5) Zion too means heaven and the church. I Jehovah make.. . judgment and justice on earth, because I find pleasure in them. (Jeremiah 9:24) I will betroth you to Myself for eternity, and I will betroth you to Myself in justice and judgment. (Hosea 2:19) Jehovah, Thy justice is in the heavens like mountains of God, and Thy judgment like the great
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deep. (Psalm 36:5-6) They ask Me for judgments of justice, they long for the approach of God. and elsewli6re.

(Isaiah 58:2)

217. There are various forms of government in the Lords spiritual kingdom, different from one community to another. The differences depend on the kinds of service the communities undertake. Their kinds of service are patterned after those involved in all the members of man, to which they correspond. The variety of these is well known. One kind of service is appropriate for the heart, another for the lungs, another for the liver, another for the pancreas and spleen, and others for each sensory organ. Just as these have different functions in the body, communities have different functions in the Grand Man, which is heaven, since it is communities that correspond to these bodily organs. On the correspondence of everything in heaven to everything in man, see the appropriate chapter (above, nn. 87-102). But all the forms of government there .agree in one respect, in focusing on the public good as their objective, and within this good, the good of each individual. This happens because everyone in all heaven is under the care of the Lord, who loves everyone and provides out of Divine Love that the common good be the source from which individuals receive their own good. Each one receives what is good as he loves the whole. For to the extent that one loves the whole, he loves everyone and each one. And because this love is the Lords, he is beloved by the Lord to that extent, and is given what is good. 218. This may serve to show what the officials are likethey are in fact the ones who more than others are involved in love and in wisdom, the ones therefore who, out of love, intend what is good for everyone and who out of wisdom know how to provide that it happens. People like this do not domineer and give orders; they minister and serve. For doing good to others out of a love for what is good, is serving; and providing that it happens is ministering. They do not make more of themselves than of others, but less, for they give first priority to the good of the community and the neighbor, and lower priority to their own good. What has first priority is greater; what has lower priority is less. They do nevertheless have honor and glory. They live in the center of the community, higher up than others, and in splendid mansions. They do accept this honor and glorynot for themselves, however, but for obedience sake. Everyone there knows, in fact, that this honor and glory are given them by the Lord, and that they are to be heeded on this account. This is the meaning of the Lords words to the disciples: Whoever wants to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you, let him be your slave. Just as the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve. ~Matthew 20:26-28) Whoever is greatest among you shall be as the least; and whoever is leader, as one who serves. (Luke 22:26) 219. A similar government, on the smallest scale, exists in each household. Here there is a head of the household and there are servants. The head loves the servants and the servants the head, so out of love they work for each other. The head teaches how to live and says what to do; the servants obey and fulfill their functions. Performing useful tasks is the delight of everyones life. Clearly then, the Lords kingdom is a kingdom of useful activities. 220. There are governments in the hells as well; for unless there were governments, the people there could not be kept fettered. But the governments involved are the opposites of
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governments in heaven. They all come under the heading of love of self. Everyone there wants to rule over others and to be on top. Given people who are not on their side, they hate them, wreak vengeance on them, and are violently hostile toward them; for this is what love of self is like. As a result, the worst do the ruling, and are obeyed out of fear. But more on this later, in speaking explicitly of the hells.

25. DIVINE WORSHIP IN HEAVEN

221. Divine worship in heaven is outwardly rather like Divine worship on earth, but inwardly it is different. They do have teachings, sermons, and church buildings. The teachings are consistent in essentials, but in the higher heavens they are characterized by a deeper wisdom than in the lower heavens. The sermons are in keeping with the teachings. And just as they have homes and mansions (nn. 183-190), they have church buildings where the preaching takes place. The reason why these things occur in heaven as well as on earth is that angels are constantly being perfected in wisdom and love. They have understanding and intention just as men do. Their understanding is of a kind that can continually be perfected, and so is their intention. Understanding is perfected by means of true elements that pertain to intelligence; and intention through good elements that pertain to love. 222. In actual fact, Divine worship in the heavens does not consist in going to church and paying attention to the sermon, but in a life characterized by love, charity, and faith according to the .teachings. Church sermons function simply as a means for instruction in matters pertinent to life. I have talked with angels about this, mentioning the belief in the world that Divine worship is just going to church, paying attention to the sermon, taking communion three or four times a year, following church law in other ritual matters, as well as making time for prayers and behaving committedly. The angels responded that these were outward matters that should indeed be observed, but that they were useless without something inward as their source, this inward something being a life in keeping with the laws taught by doctrine. 223. To learn what the meetings in churches are like, I have been allowed on occasion to enter and hear the sermons. The clergyman stands in a pulpit toward the east. Directly in front of him sit the angels who are especially involved in the light of wisdom, with those in lesser light on their right and left. They are stretched out in a circular arrangement so that all of them are within the clergymans range of vision. To each side, where his sight does not reach, no ones sits. Newcomers sit near the door, which is toward the east of the church, left of the pulpit. No one is allowed to stand behind the pulpitif there is anyone there, the clergyman becomes confused. The same thing happens if someone in the group disagrees, which necessitates his turning his face away. The sermons are characterized by such wisdom that none on earth can be cited in comparison: they are in the heavens, in a more inward light. In the spiritual kingdom the church buildings seem to be made of stone, in the celestial kingdom, of wood. This is because stone corresponds to what is true, which people in the spiritual kingdom are involved in, while wood corresponds to what is good, which is what people
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in the celestial kingdom are involved in. In this latter kingdom the buildings are not called churches, but houses of God. In the celestial kingdom the buildings have no grandeur, but in the spiritual kingdom they do have more or less grandeur. 224.I talked with a particular clergyman about the holiness that envelops people who are listening to sermons in the churches. He told me that something holy, earnest, and reverent comes to each one, in keeping with his more inward elements that have to do with love and faith. This results from the presence of something intensely holy within love and faith because the Lords Divine is there. He knew of nothing outwardly holy apart from these; and when he did think about outward holiness apart from these, said that there might perhaps be something that counterfeited holiness in outward appearance, either cleverly assumed or simply hypocritical. Some false fire of love of self and the world might arouse and maintain this kind of holiness. 225. All clergymen belong to the Lords spiritual kingdom, none to the celestial kingdom. The reason they belong to the Lords spiritual kingdom is that there, people are engaged with things true arising from what is good, and all proclamation stems from things that are true. The reason none come from the Lords celestial kingdom is that people there are engaged in the good content of love, seeing and perceiving true things from that locus, but not talking about them. But in spite of the fact that angels of the celestial kingdom do see and perceive true things, they still have sermons, because thereby they are given light in the true elements they know and are perfected in many they did not know. The moment they hear them, they grasp, they love; and they make them part of their life by living by them. They say that living by things true is loving the Lord. 226. All clergymen are appointed by the Lord, and as a result have the gift of proclaiming. No one else is allowed to teach in the churches. They are called proclaimers, not priests. This is because heavens priesthood is the celestial kingdom. Priesthood means, in fact, the good content of love for the Lord, in which the people who belong to that kingdom are involved. Heavens kingship, on the other hand, is a spiritual kingdom, since kingship means things true stemming from what is good, in which the people who belong to that kingdom are involved (see above, n. 24). 227. The teachings which the sermon follow focus without exception on life as their goal none on faith apart from life. The teaching of the inmost heaven is more filled with wisdom than is the teaching of the intermediate heaven, which in turn is more filled with wisdom than is the teaching of the outmost heaven. The teachings are in fact adapted to the grasp of the angels of each heaven. The essential element of all the teachings is the acknowledgement of the Lords Divine Human.

26. THE POWER OF HEAVENS ANGELS

228. People who have no knowledge of the spiritual world and its inflow into the natural world cannot grasp the fact that angels have power. They think angels can have no power because they are so pure and rarefied as to be invisible. But people who look more deeply into the causes of things feel differently. They realize that all the strength man has comes from his
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understanding and intention, since without these he could not move the smallest part of his body. Understanding and intention are his spiritual person. This activates the body and its members by his every signal. For what this spiritual person thinks, the mouth and tongue say; what he wills, the body performs, actually granting strength at his pleasure. Mans intention and understanding are governed by the Lord through angels and spirits. And sipce this is true of his intention and understanding, it is true of everything bodily, since this stems from them. Believe it or not, man cannot take a single step without heavens inflow. A great deal of experience has demonstrated the truth of this to me. Angels have been allowed to activate my steps, my motions, my tongue, and my speech as they wished, by flowing into my intention and thought. I have been convinced that I could do nothing independently. Afterwards, the angels said that each and every person is governed in this fashion; and that this can be known from the churchs doctrine and from the Word. For man prays that God send His angels to lead him, guide his steps, teach him, inspire him what to think and say, etc. Still, when someone thinks on his own, apart from doctrine, he says and believes otherwise. These matters have been related in order to make known the kind of power angels have with man. 229. The power angels have in the spiritual world is so great that if I were to cite at this point everything I have seen, it would be beyond belief. If there is something left there that needs to be removed because it is in opposition to the Divine design, they raze and destroy it by sheer force of will, with a look. I have seen mountains, under the control of evil people, razed and destroyed, sometimes shaken from boundary to boundary as if by an earthquake, the central peaks parting into a chasm, the evil ones on them engulfed. Also, I have seen hundreds of thousands of evil spirits routed by them and hurled into hell. A multitude is powerless against them, as are ploys, strategems, and factions. They see them all and wreck them in a second (but more on this subject may be found in the account of The Last Judgment and Babylon Destroyed). This is the kind of strength angels have in the spiritual world. We can see from the Word that angels have similar power in the natural world when they are allowed to use it. See, for example, their giving whole armies over to slaughter, their introducing a plague from which seventy thousand people diedwe read of this angel, The angel stretched out his hand against Jerusalem to destroy it; but Jehovah, repenting of His evil, said to the angel who was destroying people, It is enough; withdraw your hand. And David saw the angel who struck the people. (II Samuel 24:15-17) There are other instances as well. Angels are called powers because they have such power, and in David we read, Bless Jehovah, ye angels most powerful in strength (Psalm 103:20). 230. It does need to be realized, however, that angels have no power on their own, that all their strength is rather from the Lord. They are powers to the extent that they admit this. Any one of them who believes he has strength on his own promptly becomes so feeble that he cannot withstand a single evil spirit. This is why angels attribute absolutely no credit whatever to themselves, refusing any praise or honor for what they do and crediting it to the Lord. 231. The Divine-True that comes from the Lord is what possesses all the power in the heavens; for the Lord, in heaven, is the Divine-True made one with the Divine-Good (see nn. 126-140). To the extent that angels welcome this, they are powers. Each one is his own truth and his own good, since each one is of the same quality as his discernment and intention. Discernment has to do with what is true, being wholly composed of what is true. Intention has to do with what is good, being wholly composed of what is good. For anything a person discerns he calls true, and anything he intends he calls good. This is why
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every person is his own truth and his own good. To the degree, then, that an angel is true from the Divine and good from the Divine, he is a power, because to this degree the Lord is with him. Since no angel is engaged in just the same, identical good and true as another (for in heaven as in the world there is unending variety (see n. 20), no angel is possessed of the same power as another. The ones who make up the arms in the Grand Man or heaven are possessed of the greatest power, because they are involved in things true more than others are, and the good from all of heaven flows into their true elements. So too the strength of the whole person is channeled into the arms, and the whole body puts its energies to work through them. This is why arms and hands are used in the Word to mean power. So sometimes a naked arm appears in heaven, powerful enough to shatter anything in its way, even a vast boulder in the earth. Once it actually moved toward me, and I realized that it could crush my bones to powder. 232. The fact that the Divine-True that comes from the Lord possesses all power, and the fact that angels have power insofar as they welcome the Divine-True from the Lord, have been cited above (n. 137). Angels, however welcome the Divine-True to the extent that they welcome the Divine-Good. All power actually belongs to true things that stem from what is good, none to true things apart from what is good. Likewise, all power belongs to what is good by means of things true, none to what is good apart from things true. Power arises from the bonding of these two. It is the same with faith and love. For it makes no difference whether you say the true or faith everything of faith is true. And it makes no difference whether you say the good or loveeverything of love is good. The amount of power angels have through things true that stem from what is good, can be seen in the fact that an evil spirit simply looked at by an angel collapses and ceases to look human until the angel turns his eyes elsewhere. The reason this happens at the gaze of angels eyes is that angels sight stems from heavens light, and heavens light is the Divine-True (see above, nn. 126-132). Eyes, in fact, correspond to things true stemming from what is good. 233. Granted that all power belongs to true things that stem from what is good, no power whatever belongs to false things that stem from what is evil. All the people in hell are involved in false things that stem from what is evil. So they have no power whatever against what is true and what is good. But we shall speak later about the kind of power they do have among themselves, and of the kind of power evil spirits have before they are cast into hell.

27. ANGELS LANGUAGE

234. Angels talk with each other just the way people in the world do, and they talk of various thingshousehold matters, political matters, issues of moral life and issues of spiritual life, for example. There is no noticeable difference, except that they talk with each other more intelligently than men do, since they talk more profoundly, from thought. I have often been allowed to associate with them, to talk with them as friend with friend occasionally as stranger with stranger. At such times, being in a state like theirs, I had no way of knowing that I was not talking with people on earth. 235. Angelic speech, like human speech, is divided into units. Too, it is just as much spoken
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aloud and heard aloud, for angels have mouths, tongues, and ears. They have an atmosphere in which their speech sounds are pronounced; but it is a spiritual atmosphere, fit for angels who are spiritual. Angels breathe in their atmosphere and use breath to pronounce words just the way men do in theirs. 236. There is a single language for everyone in all heaven. They all understand each other, no matter what commutity they come from, near or far. The language is not learned thereit is native to everyone. It actually flows from their affection and thought. The sound of speech corresponds to their affections, and the distinctions of soundthe speech unitsto thoughtconcepts stemming from affection. Because the language does correspond to these elements, it too is spiritual, being affection sounding and thought speaking. [2] Anyone who gives the matter explicit attention can come to the realization that every thought comes from an affection, which in turn belongs to love, and that the concepts of thought are the various forms in which the general affection is parcelled out. For no thought or concept whatever exists apart from an affectionthis is the source of their soul and life. This is why angels know simply from conversation what another person is likefrom the sound, they know what his affection is like, and from the distinctions of sound or speech units they know what his mind is like. The wiser angels can tell from a single sentence what the dominant affection is like, since they focus particularly on this. [3] It is recognized that an individual has various affectionsone when he feels happy, another when he feels sad, or gentle and compassionate, or candid and honest, or loving and charitable, or zealous and touchy, or deceitful and cunning, or eager for honor and fame, and soon. But a dominant affection or love lies within each of these. For this reason, the wiser angels, perceiving this, know from conversation the whole state of another person. [4] I have been shown the truth of this by an abundance of experience. I have heard angels lay bare someones life simply by listening to him. They have also told me that they know all about anothers life from a few concepts of this thought, since from these they know his dominant love, which contains everything in an order. This and nothing else, they say, is a persons book of life. 237. Angelic language has nothing in common with human language except a few words that derive their sounds from particular affections. Even then, the likeness is not with the actual words, but with their sound, to which we will return later. The lack of common ground between angelic language and human languages is evidenced by angels inability to pronounce a single word of a human language. They have tried, and have been unable. They can actually pronounce nothing unless it agrees completely with their affection. Anything that does not agree opposes their very life; for life belongs to affection, and their speech flows from it. I have been told that peoples first language on our earth was in accord because it came to them from heaven; also that the Hebrew language agrees in some respects. 238. Since angels speech does correspond to their affection, which belongs to love, and since heavens love is love for the Lord and love toward the neighbor (see above, nn. 13-19), we can see how choice and pleasant their conversation is. It actually touches not just the ears, but the more inward reaches of the minds of those who hear it. There was one particular hardhearted spirit with whom an angel spoke. Eventually he was so touched by the conversation that he burst into tears, saying that he couldnt help it, love was talking, and he had never cried before. 239. Angels speech is full of wisdom, too, because it comes from their more inward thought. Their more inward thought is wisdom, as their more inward affection is love. Their love and
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wisdom come together in speech. As a result, their speech is so full of wisdom that they with a single word can express things that men could not compass in a thousand words. Then, too, their thought-concepts embrace things such as men cannot grasp, let alone verbalize. Consequently, the sounds and sights of heaven are called inexpressible, and such as ear simply has not yet heard, nor eye seen. [2] I have been granted knowledge of this on the basis of experience. On occasion, I have been assigned to the state in which angels were, and in that state have talked with them. At such times I understood everything. But when I was sent back into my earlier state-hence to the natural thinking proper to manand wanted to recall what I had heard, I could not. For there were thousands of things that had no equivalent in concepts of natural thought, that were therefore inexpressible except simply through shiftings of a heavenly lightnot at all by human words. [3] The concepts of angels thinking, which are the sources of their words, are changes in heavens light as well; and the affections which give rise to their tones of voice are changes in heavens warmth. This is because heavens light is the Divine-True, or wisdom, and heavens warmth is the Divine-Good, or love (see above, nn. 126-140). Angels derive affection from Divine love and thinking from Divine wisdom. 240. Since angels speech emanates directly from their affection (for as stated at n. 236 above, thought concepts are different forms in which general affections are parcelled out), angels can say more in a minute than man can say in half an hour. They can also set down in a few words the contents of many written pages. This too has been demonstrated to me by an abundance of experience. So angels thought-concepts and the words of their language make a one, like an effective cause and its result. For in the words, there is set forth as a result what was present in the thought-concepts as a cause. This is why each word encompasses so much. When the details of angels thought (and hence the details of their speech) are made visible, they look like a delicate wave or an ambient atmosphere, containing countless elements appropriately arranged, elements from their wisdom which enter anothers thought and move him. Anyones thoughtconcepts, angels or mans, can be made visible in heavens light whenever it pleases the Lord. 241. Angels who come from the Lords celestial kingdom talk the way angels do who come from the Lords spiritual kingdom, except that celestial angels talk from a more inward thought than spiritual angels. Further, since celestial angels are involved in the good proper to love to the Lord, they talk from wisdom; while spiritual angels, being involved in the good proper to charity toward the neighbor (which is essentially true, seen. 215), talk from intelligence. For the derivative of what is good is wisdom, and the derivative of what is true is intelligence. So the speech of celestial angels is rather like a gentle stream, soft and unbroken, while the speech of spiritual angels is rather energetic and distinct. Further, the speech of celestial angels uses the sounds u and o a good deal, while the speech of spiritual angels uses the sounds e and i. The vowels serve for tone, and within the tone is the affection. For as mentioned above (n. 236), the tone of angels speech corresponds to affection, and the distinct sound-unitsthe wordscorrespond to thought-concepts that stem from affections. Because vowels do not belong directly to language, but rather involve using resonance to raise the pitch of its sound-units for specific affections dependent pn a general state, vowels are not represented in Hebrew, and are also pronounced in different ways. Angels recognize from this what a person is like as far as affection and love are concerned. The speech of celestial angels lacks the hard consonants, and rarely puts two consonants together without slipping in a syllable beginning with a vowel. This is why the little word and slips in so often in the Word, as may be clear to people who
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read the Word in Hebrew. For in Hebrew, this little word is soft, and in both its forms is a vowel sound. It is possible to tell somewhat from the sounds in the Hebrew Word whether a word belongs to a celestial class or to a spiritual classthat is, whether it deals with what is good or with what is true. Words that deal with what is good use the sounds u and o a good deal, and a to some extent. Words that deal with what is true use rather e and i. Since affections do find expression primarily in tones, in human speech words using u and a sounds are preferred when dealing with major issues such as heaven and God. Musical sounds rise in this direction, too, when such matters are involved. This is why the art of music is so adept at expressing different varieties of emotion. 242. There is a kind of harmony in angelic speech that defies description. The source of this harmony is this: the affections and thoughts that give rise to speech pour out and spread in accord with heavens form, and heavens form provides the pattern for all friendship and all communication. On the form of heaven as the pattern for angels friendships and for the flow of their affections and thoughts, see above (nn. 200-2 12). 243. A language like that of the spiritual world is instinctive in every individual, but it is in the realm of his more inward understanding. However, since this realm does not, in mans case, find its way into words that parallel affections the way it does with angels, man is unaware that the language is there. Still, this is why man is at home with this language of angels and spirits when he enters the other life, and knows how to speak it without being taught. But more on this below. 244. As stated above, there is one language for everyone in heaven. But it does vary in that the speech of the wise is more profound, more rich with shadings of affections and thoughtconcepts. The speech of the less wise is more outward, without the same richness. The speech of simple folk is still more outward, and is consequently made up of words from which meaning is gathered, the way it happens when people on earth talk to each other. There is also a language that uses the face, trailing off into something audible that is altered by concepts. There is also a language in which representations of heaven are combined with concepts and one formed from concepts presented to sight. There is also a language using bodily motions corresponding to affections, and picturing things similar to those conveyed by words. There is a language by means of shared elements of affection and shared elements of thought, there is a thundering language, and there are others. 245. The speech of evil and hellish spirits is, predictably, natural, since it does come from their affections. But it comes from evil affections and therefore from dirty concepts, which angels wholly spurn. So the languages of hell are opposed to the languages of heaven, which means that evil people cannot stand angelic speech nor angels hellish speech. To angels, hellish speech is like a foul smell that hurts the nostrils. The language of hypocrites (the ones who can pretend to be angels of light) is like the language of angels as far as the words are concerned. But as to affections and resultant thought-concepts, it is wholly opposite. So when the inward quality of their speech is perceived, the speech itself sounds like a grinding of teeth, and strikes horror.

28. ANGELS SPEECH WITH MAN

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246. Angels who talk with man do not talk in their own language but in the persons language. They also talk in other languages a person knows, but not in languages unfamiliar to him. The reason for this is that when angels are talking with someone, they turn toward him and bond themselves to him. The bond of angel to man brings the two into a similar kind of thinking. And since a persons thought is connected to his memory, where speech comes from, the two are in command of the same language. Further, when an angel or spirit comes to a person and is bonded to him by turning toward him, he gains entrance to his whole memoryso much so that as far as he is aware, he on his own knows everything the person knows, including languages. [2] I have talked with angels about this, and have said that they might claim to be talking ~ith me in my own dialect because it seemed that way to them, but that in fact they were not the ones who were doing the talking, but I, this being supported by the fact that angels cannot utter a single word of human language (n. 237). Besides, human language is natural, while angels are spiritual, and spiritual beings cannot produce anything by natural means. Their response was that they know their bond with the person they are talking to is a bond with his spiritual thinking. But since this does flow into his natural thinking, which in turn is connected to his memory, it seems to the angels as though the persons language is their own, that all his knowledge is theirs. This happens, they say, because it is the Lords good pleasure that there should be with men this bond, this virtual incursion of heaven. The condition of man today, however, is different, so that this kind of bonding no longer occurs with angels, only with spirits who are not in heaven. [3] I have talked with spirits about this same subject too. They, in contrast, wanted to believe not that the person was speaking but that they were speaking within the person, not that the person knew what he was doing, but that they knewhence that everything the person knew came from them. I wanted to prove to them at length that this was not true, but it was pointless. Later on, in dealing with the World of Spirits, we will note who are meant by spirits and who are meant by angels. 247. The intimacy of the bond between angels and spirits and man (so intimate that they have no awareness that a persons attributes are not their own) results also from the fact that there is such a bond between the spiritual and natural worlds that they are virtually one. However, since man has alienated himself from heaven, it has been arranged by the Lord that there be angels and spirits with each individual, and that the individual be led by the Lord by means of them. This is why the bond is so intimate. It would have been different if man had not alienated himself. In that case, he could have been led by the Lord through a general inflow from heaven, without having spirits and angels yoked to him. But more in detail on this later, in dealing with the bond between heaven and man. 248. The speech of angels or spirits with man sounds just as audible as the speech of one person with another. However, it is not audible to people nearby, only to the individual himself. This is because the speech of an angel or spirit flows into the persons thought first, and comes by an inner path to his physical ear; it thus activates it from within. But the speech of one person with another travels through the air first, comes by an outer path to his physical ear, and activates it from the outside. We can see then that the speech of an angel or spirit with a person is heard within him; and since it does also activate the physical ear, it is also audible. In evidence of this descent from within of an angels or spirits speech, I have observed that it also travels to the tongue and makes it quiver slightly, though not with the kind of motion that occurs when the person himself is using his tongue to enunciate speech sounds. 249. Talking with spirits, however, rarely happens nowadays, because it is dangerous. For in
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this case spirits know what they otherwise do not know, that they are with someone. Evil spirits, you see, are by nature ones who harbor a murderous hatred toward man, with no greater desire than to destroy him soul and bodywhich actually happens to people who overindulge in fantasies to the point that they cut themselves off from the pleasures .appropriate to the natural person. Actually, people who lead a lonely life may at times hear spirits talking with them, without risk. But the spirits who are with them are moved away by the Lord from time to time so that they may not know they are with the person. For most spirits are not aware that there is any world but the one they are in, or therefore that there are people somewhere else. Consequently, a person is not allowed to carry on a conversation with them, for if he could speak, they would know. People who think a great deal about religious matters and become wrapped up in them to the point that they virtually see them within themselves, also begin to hear spirits talking with them. For when someone deliberately becomes absorbed in religious matters, no matter what kind, without interrupting them with various considerations that serve worldly uses, these religious matters travel inward, settle there, and take over the persons whole spirit. They even enter the spiritual world and affect spirits who are there. But people like this are ones who see visions and who get carried away. No matter what spirit they hear, they believe he is the Holy Spirit, when in fact there are spirits who take delight in carrying people away. Spirits like this see false things as true, and having seen them, convince themselves and in turn convince any people they have access to. Since these spirits began to convince them of evil matters to which obedience was owed, they have gradually been removed. Spirits who delight in carrying away can be distinguished from other spirits by their belief that they are the Holy Spirit, and that what they say is Divine. These spirits do not hurt the person because he holds them in honor with Divine worship. I have talked with them a number of times, and at such times the disgusting things they impart to their worshippers have been laid bare. They live together toward the left, in a barren area. 250. No one is allowed to talk with angels except people who are involved in true things derived from what is goodespecially people involved in a recognition of the Lord and of the Divine within His Human, since this is the truth the heavens are engaged in. For as shown above, the Lord is the God of heaven (nn. 2-6); the Lords Divine constitutes heaven (nn. 7-12); and the Lords Divine in heaven is love for Him and charity from Him toward the neighbor (nn. 13-19). All heaven, taken in a single grasp, reflects a single person, as does each community of heaven, and each angel is in a perfect human formall this from the Lords Divine-Human (nn. 59-86). We can see, then, that conversation with angels of heaven happens only for people whose inward reaches have, by things Divinely true, been opened all the way to the Lord. For the Lord flows into these things in an individual, and when the Lord flows in, so does heaven. The reason things Divinely true open the more inward reaches is that man is so created that as far as his inner person is concerned he is a reflection of heaven; while as far as the outer is concerned, he is a reflection of the world (n. 57). The inner person cannot be opened except by the Divine-True emanating from the Lord, since this is the light of heaven and the life of heaven (nn. 126-140). 251. The inflow of the Lord Himself into man is into his forehead, and from there into the whole face, since the forehead corresponds to love, and the face corresponds to all the more inward elements of the person. The inflow of spiritual angels into man is into his head all the way across the pate and the temples, the whole area under which the cerebrum lies, since this part of the head corresponds to intelligence. But the inflow of celestial angels is into the part of the head under which the cerebellum lies, called the occiput, from the ears around to the nape of the neck, for this area corresponds to wisdom.
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All the speech of angels with man comes by these paths into his thought. I have grasped by this means just who the angels were who were talking with me. 252. People who talk with heavens angels see what is in heaven as well, since they are seeing from the light of heaven in which their more inward reaches are. The angels too see through them what is on earth. For in such people heaven is bonded to earth and earth bonded to heaven, since as already noted (n. 246), when angels turn toward a person, they join themselves to him so completely that they have no knowledge that the persons attributes are not their own. This applies not only to elements of his language, but also to elements of sight and hearing. The person, in turn, has no knowledge that the things that flow in through angels are not his own. The most ancient people on this earth were involved in this kind of bond with heavens angels, so that their era was called the Golden Age. Since they did recognize the Divine in Human form (that is, the Lord), they talked with heavens angels as their friends, and heavens angels in turn talked with them as their friends. In them, heaven and earth made a one. But after that era, man steadily moved away from heaven by loving himself more than the Lord and the world more than heaven. As a result, he began to feel the delights of love of self and the world as distinct from the delights of heaven, eventually to the point that be did not recognize any other delight. Then his more inward reaches which had lain open to heaven, were closed, and his more outward reaches were opened to the world. Whenever this happens, a person is in the light as far as everything in the world is concerned, and in darkness as far as everything in heaven is concerned. 253. Since that era, only seldom has anyone talked with heavens angels, though some have talked with spirits who were not in heaven. The inner and outer realms of man are so constituted that they are either turned toward the Lord as their common center (n. 124), or they are turned toward the person himself, which means away from the Lord. Things which are turned toward the Lord are also turned toward heaven; things which are turned toward the person himself are also turned toward the world. Things turned in this latter direction are hard to raise up. Still the Lord does raise them as much as possible by turning the love, and this is done by means of true things from the Word. 254. I have been told how the Lord spoke with the prophets through whom the Word came. He did not speak with them the way He did with the ancient people, by flowing into their more inward reaches, but rather by means of spirits whom He sent to them. These the Lord filled with His look, and in this fashion He inspired the words which they were dictating to the prophets. Consequently it was not an inflow, but dictation. Further, since the words came directly from the Lord, the details were filled with what is Divine, and contain an inner meaning of such nature that angels of heaven grasp the words in a celestial and spiritual meaning, while men grasp them in a natural meaning. In this way, the Lord has used the Word to bond heaven and earth together. I have also been shown what it is like for spirits to be filled with what is Divine by the Lord by means of a look. A spirit filled by the Lord with what is Divine has no awareness that he is not the Lord, or that it is not the Divine which is speaking. This lasts until he has finished speaking. Afterwards he realizes that he is a spirit, and that he has not spoken on his own, but rather from the Lord. Since this was the state of the spirits who spoke with the prophets, the prophets say that Jehovah spoke. Even the spirits themselves called themselves Jehovah, as can be illustrated not only by prophetic .passages, but even by historical passages of the Word.
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255. To make it known what the bonding of angels and spirits to man is like, I may relate some noteworthy items which offer light and conviction on this topic. When angels or spirits turn toward someone, it seems to them absolutely as though the persons language were theirs and they had no oilier. This is because they are involved in the individuals language rather than in their own, which they cannot call to mind. But the moment they turn away from the person,. they are involved in their own angelic and spiritual language, and know nothing of the persons language. Something like this has happened to me when I associated with angels and was in a state like theirs. Then I too spoke with them in their own language. I knew nothing of my own, which I could not call to mind. The moment I was not associated with them, I was involved in my own language. It is worth noting that when angels or spirits turn toward a person, they can talk with him no matter how far away he is. They have talked with me from a distance just as audibly as though they were at hand. But when they turn away from someone and talk with each other, nothing at all is audible to the person, even though this may take place right next to his ear. Evidently then, all bonding in the spiritual world depends on turning a particular way. It is also worth noting that many spirits can talk with a person at once, and he with them. Actually, they send a particular spirit from themselves to the person they want to talk with. This emissary spirit turns toward the person, and the many turn toward this spirit of theirs. In this way they focus their thoughts, which the spirit then presents. To the spirit, it seems as though he were speaking on his own, to the others that they are doing the same. So a bonding is effected between many and one by this turning in particular directions. But much more will be said later on about these emissary spirits, called subordinates, and about communication through them. 256. No spirit or angel may talk with a person from his own memory, only from the persons memory. Angels and spirits do have a memory just as men, do. If a spirit were from his own memory to talk with someone, then it would seem to that person as though the things he was thinking were his own, yet they would still belong to the spirit. It is like recollecting something he has never heard or seen. I have been granted knowledge of the truth of this by experience. This phenomenon gave rise to the belief among some early people that after several thousand years they would return to their former life and all its events, also that they had already made such a return. They based this on the fact that occasionally a sort of recollection would occur to them of things they have never seen or heard. This happened because spirits had from their own memories flowed into their thought concepts. 257. There are also spirits called natural and corporeal spirits. When they come to someone, they do not join with his thoughts the way other spirits do. They rather enter his body and take over all his senses. They speak with his mouth; they act with his limbs. To them, it seems wholly as though everything of the persons belonged to them. These are the spirits that possess people. But they have been cast into hell by the Lord, and thus completely taken away; so that possessions of this kind do not occur nowadays.

29. WRITTEN MATERIALS IN HEAVEN

258. Inasmuch as angels do have a spoken language, and their language involves words,
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they also have written materials; their mind convey meaning through written materials as they do through speech. Several times, I have been sent pages inscribed with writingsome just like hand written pages, some like pages published in print in the world. I could even read them in similar fashion, but I was not allowed to get more than one or two meanings from them. This is because it is not in keeping with the Divine design for anyone to be taught by means of books from heaven, only by means of the Word. For only by this means is there a communication and a bonding of heaven with the world, and thus of the Lord with man. It is clear in Ezekiel that pages written in heaven were visible to the prophets: When I looked, behold a hand sent me by the spirit, and in it a scroll of a book which he unrolled before me. It was written on the front and on the back. (Ezekiel 2:9-101) also in John: I saw in the right hand of Him who sat upon the throne a book written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. (Revelation 5:1) 259. The existence of books in heaven is provided by the Lord for the sake of the Word, for in its essence the Word is the Divine-True, the source of all heavenly wisdom for men and angels alike. It was in fact dictated by the Lord; and what is dictated by the Lord travels through the heavens in order and comes to rest with man. Consequently it is adapted both to the wisdom angels are involved in and to the intelligence people are involved in. This is why angels too have the Word and read it as men on earth do. Their doctrinal tenets are derived from it, and their sermons come from it (cf. n. 221). It is the very same Word. To be precise, its natural meaning, which is the literal meaning to us, does not exist in heaven. A spiritual meaning exists instead, which is the inner meaning. The nature of this meaning may be seen in the booklet, The White Horse Mentioned in Revelation. 260. Once a small page was sent me from heaven, with only a few words written on it in Hebrew letters. I was told that each letter enfolded secrets of wisdom, and that these were within the bends and curves of the letters and therefore in the sounds as well. I could see from this the meaning of these words of the Lord: I tell you in truth, until heaven and earth perish, one jot or one title will not pass from the law. (Matthew 5:18) It is recognized within the church that the Word is Divine to its every tip [apex]. But it is not known as yet just where this Divine element lies hidden in every tip, and so this should be prevented. In the inmost heaven, writings are made up of various curved and rounded forms. The curves and roundings are in keeping with heavens form. By their means angels present arcana of their wisdom, and many things beyond the power of words to express. Furtherremarkablyangels know this way of writing without study or teacher; it is conferred on them like the spoken language itself (cf. n. 236). So this writing is heavenly writing. It is conferred on them because all the outreach of angels thoughts and affections, and therefore all the sharing of their intelligence and wisdom, proceed according to heavens form (n. 201). As a result, their writing flows into this form. I have been told that the earliest people on this earth, before letters were invented, had this kind of writing, also that is was carried over into the letters of the Hebrew language, which in early times were all curved, with none separate and straight the way they are today. This is why there are things Divine in the Word, and arcana of heaven even in its jots, tips, and tittles. 261. This writing, made by figures drawn from the heavenly form, is used in the inmost heaven, where people are above all others involved in wisdom. Through these figures they
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present the affections from which thoughts flow, following in sequence according to the substance of the matter in question. This is why these writings enfold secrets that cannot be plumbed by thinking. I have been allowed to see these writing, too. www.universe-people.com In the lower heavens, however, writings of this kind do not exist. In these heavens, writing is like writing in the world, with similar letters. Still, they are not comprehensible to men because they are in an angelic language, and angelic language is of such nature that it has nothing in common with human languages (n. 237). With the vowels they express feelings; with the consonants thought concepts derived from feelings, and with words so composed they express the meaning of the matter (see above, nn. 236,241). Further, this writing can enfold in a few words more than man can describe in many pages. I have seen these writings, too. In the lower heavens, they have a Word written in this manner; and in the inmost heaven they have one written in celestial form. 262. It is interesting to note that written materials in the heavens flow naturally from angels thoughts themselvessuch as effortless process that it is as though the thought simply projected itself. The hand does not hesitate in choosing a particular word, since the words (those written as well as those spoken) correspond to their thought concepts, and all correspondence is natural and spontaneous. There do occur in heaven writings without the aid of hands, but these do not last. 263. I have also seen things written from heaven composed soley out of numbers in an order and sequence, quite as is done with things written with letters and words. I have been informed that these written materials come from the inmost heaven; also that their heavenly writing (treated above, nn. 260-261) is presented in numbers to angels of a lower heaven when thought descends from it; and also that this numerical writing likewise involves hidden things, some of which cannot be grasped by thought nor expressed in words. Numbers do in fact correspond and indicate according to correspondence just like words. There is the difference, though, that numbers involve generalities while words involve details. And since a single generality involves countless details, numerical writing enfolds more hidden things than alphabetic writing. This has enabled me to see that numbers in the Word mean things just as much as the words do. The meanings of the simple numbers such as 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12, and of the composite numbers 20, 30, 50, 70, 100, ,J~O00, 10,000, 12,000 and others, can be found in the appropriate passages of Arcana Coelestia. In this kind of writing in heaven, a number is always prefixed on which the following depend in sequence, as if on their subject. For this number is, so to speak, the title of the matter treated, by which the following numbers are limited to the specific topic. 264. As for people who know nothing about heaven, who are unwilling to hold any concept of it except as something pure and airy where angels float around like intelligent minds without hearing or sight, they are unable to think of angels as having language and writing. In fact, they locate the actual occurence of everything in the material realm. Yet the things that exist in heaven occur with just as much reality as things in the world, and the angels who are there have everything useful for life and useful for wisdom.

30. THE WISDOM OF HEAVENS ANGELS

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265. It is hard to grasp the nature of angels wisdom, since it so surpasses human wisdom that no comparison is possible, and anything so surpassing appears to be nothing at all. There are some overlooked means of describing it which, before they are recognized, are like shadows in the mind, and often conceal the essential quality of the subject. Still, they are of such nature that they can be known, and once known, grasped, if only the mind finds pleasure in them. For pleasure brings light with it, since it stems from love; and if people love the kind of thing that has to do with Divine and heavenly wisdom, a light from heaven shines on them, and enlightenment occurs. 266. The nature of angels wisdom can be deduced from the fact that angels are in heavens light, and heavens light is essentially the Divine-True or Divine Wisdom. This light illuminates at once the sight of their inward realm that belongs to the mind, and the sight of their outward realm that belongs to the eyes (on the identity of heavens light with the Divine-True or Divine Wisdom, see above, nn. 126-133). Angels are also in heavenly warmth, which essentially is the Divine-Good or Divine Love, the source of their affection and longing for being wise (on the identity of heavens warmth with the Divine-Good or Divine Love, see above, nn. 133-140). As for the fact that angels are engaged in wisdomeven to the extent that they could be called wisdoms this can be inferred from the fact that all their thoughts and affections flow according to the heavenly form, which is the form of Divine Wisdom, it may also be inferred from the fact that their more inward reaches, which receive wisdom, are arranged on that heavenly form (on the fact that angels affections and thoughts, and consequently their intelligence and wisdom, flow according to heavens form, see above, nn. 201-212). [2] There is evidence for angels having surpassing wisdom also in the fact that their speech is wisdoms speech, flowing directly and freely from thought, and this in turn flowing from affection in such fashion that their speech is thought from affection in an outward form. This is why nothing diverts them from the Divine inflow, nothing of that outward that for man intrudes in his speech from unrelated thoughts (on angels speech being a speech of their thought and affection, see nn. 234-245). Still another factor contributes to this wisdom of angels, namely the agreement with their wisdom of everything they see with their eyes and perceive by sense. For these are correspondences, and consequently are Objective entities in forms that portray elements appropriate to wisdom (on the proposition that all things visible in heaven are correspondences to the more inward elements of angels, and that they are portrayals of their wisdom, see above, nn. 170-182). [3] Especially, angels thoughts are not limited and constrained by ideas derived from space and time the way human thoughts are. For spaces and times belong to nature; and things that belong to nature lead the mind away from spiritual matters and deprive intellectual sight of its outreach (on the proposition that angels concepts do not contain time and space and are therefore less limited than human concepts, see above, nn. 162-169 and 191-199). Angels thoughts are not drawn down into earthly or material matters nor interrupted by anxieties over the necessities of life. So they are not drawn away from the pleasures of wisdom by such matters the way the thoughts of people in the world are. All things come to them from the Lord free; they are clothed, fed, and housed free (nn. 181-190). And beyond this, they are granted pleasures and comforts in the measure that they accept wisdom from the Lord. All this has been related to show where angels get such wisdom. 267. The reason angels can accept such wisdom is that their more inward reaches are open; and wisdom, like all perfection, increases toward more inward things. Consequently, it increases
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in the measure that these are opened. There are three levels of life in every angel, which correspond to the three heavens (see nn, 29-40). Angels in whom the first level is opened are in the first or outmost heaven. Angels in whom the second level is opened are in the second or intermediate heaven. But angels in whom the third level is opened are in the third or inmost heaven. The wisdom of angels in the heavens is matched to these levels. Consequently, the wisdom of angels of the inmost heaven vastly surpasses the wisdom of angels of the intermediate heaven; and their wisdom in turn vastly surpasses that of angels of the outmost heaven (see above, nn. 209, 210; and on the nature of the levels, see n. 38). The reason for these distinctions is that the elements present on a higher level are details, while those of a lower level are generalities, the generalities being inclusive of the details. The ratio between the details and the generalities is on the order of thousands or ten thousands to one. Consequently the ratio of the wisdom of angels of a higher heaven to the Wisdom of angels of a lower heaven is the same. But even the wisdom of these latter angels surpasses mans wisdom, for man is involved in the physical and the bodys sense impressions; and mans physical sense impressions are on the lowest level of all. This shows what kind of wisdom is proper to people who do their thinking on the basis of sense impressions, that is, people called sense-oriented people. In fact, they are not involved in wisdom at all, only in information. It is different though with people whose thoughts are raised above sense impressions; and still more different with people whose more inward reaches are opened all the way into heavens light. 268. The extent of angels wisdom can be determined from the fact that in the heavens there is a sharing of everything. The understanding and wisdom of one person are conveyed to another; heaven is a joint participation in everything good. This is because heavenly love is of such nature that it wants what it has to belong to another. So no one in heaven sees any good thing of his as good within himself, unless it is also in someone elsewhich is a source of heavens happiness, too. Angels derive this attitude from the Lord, whose Divine Love is of the same quality. I have been allowed to know at first hand that there is this kind of sharing in the heavens. Once some simple folk were taken up into heaven, and while they were there, they entered into angelic wisdom as well. During that time, they understood things they could not grasp before, and said things they could not have uttered in their former state. 269. Words cannot describe what angels wisdom is like-it can only be illustrated by a few generalities. Angels can express in a word what man cannot express in a thousand words. What is more, one angelic word contains countless elements that cannot be expressed by the words of a human language. In fact, the smallest things angels say contain hidden elements of wisdom in flawless connection that human information never approaches. Then too, what angels cannot complete with the words of their language they supply with tone, which contains an affection for the subjects in their proper order. For as stated above (nn. 236, 241), they do express affections by tones, while by words they express thought concepts arising from affections. This is why things heard in heaven are called inexpressible. By the same token, angels can expound in a few words the details set down in a volume of a written work, and can introduce into each word elements that raise it toward a more inward wisdom. For their language is of such nature that it is in accord with their affections, and each word is in accord with their concepts. The words are changed in countless ways depending on the series of matters involved in the whole thought-complex.
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[2] More inward angels can know a persons whole life from the tone, from a few spoken words. From the tone, patterned by means of the concepts involved in the words, they perceive his dominant love, which has recorded in it, so to speak, all the details of his life. This may serve to show what angels, wisdom is like. The ratio between their wisdom and human wisdom is on the order of ten thousand to one. It is rather like the motor impulses of the whole body, which are beyond counting, in comparison to the resulting action which to human senses looks like a simple unit. Or it is like thousands of entities seen through a perfect microscope, compared to the one indistinct entity seen by the naked eye. [3] I should like to illustrate this with an example. An angel, out of his wisdom, described regeneration, citing arcana on the subject in proper sequence to the hundreds. Each of these he filled with concepts involving deeper arcana, all this from beginning to end. He actually explained how the spiritual person is conceived anew, is carried in the womb, so to speak, is born, grows up, and is perfected step by step. He said he could amplify the number of arcana to several thousand, those he had mentioned being only about the regeneration of the outer person, and there being countless more about the regeneration of the inner. I could see from this, and from other similar things I have heard from angels, what great wisdom they have, and how great relatively is the ignorance of man, who hardly knows what regeneration is and does not know a single phase of the process while he is involved in it. 270. Let us now speak about the wisdom of angels of the third or inmost heaven, and how far it surpasses the wisdom of angels of the first or outmost heaven. The wisdom of angels of the third or inmost heaven is beyond understanding, even for people who are in the outmost heaven. This is because the more inward reaches of angels of the third heaven are opened to the third level, while the more inward reaches of angels of the first heaven are opened only to the first level. Further, all wisdom increases toward the inner, and is perfected in proportion to its openness (see nn. 208, 267). [2] Since the more inward reaches of angels of the third or inmost heaven are opened to the third level, Divine true things are virtually inscribed on them. For the more inward elements of the third levelmore than those of the second and first levelsare in heavens form. Heavens form stems from the Divine-True, and is therefore in accord with Divine Wisdom. This is why these angels seem to have things Divine and true virtually inscribed on them, or virtually inherent and innate. Consequently, the moment they hear things genuinely true and Divine, they acknowledge and grasp them; and thereafter they virtually see them in themselves. This being the nature of angels of the third heaven, they never apply logic to things Divine and true. Still less do they debate about anything true as to whether it is so or not, nor do they know what believing or having faith are. What they say is, What is faith? I perceive, I see that this is so. They cite comparable situations by way of illustration. It would be just as though someone out with a friend were to see a house and all the various things in and around it, and were to tell his friend that he ought to believe that these things existed, and were what they seemed to be. Or it would be as though someone saw a garden with trees and fruit, and told his friend that he ought to have faith that it was a garden, that those were trees and fruit, when he could actually see them plainly with his own eyes. This is why these angels never use the term faith, nor have any concept of it. Consequently, they do not apply logic to things true and Divine, much less debate about anything true as to whether it is so or not. [3] But angels of the first or outmost heaven do not have things true and Divine inscribed on their more inward natures in this way, since nothing but the first level of life is opened to them. They do therefore apply logic to these matters, and people who do this scarcely see past the obvious form of the matter they are reasoning about. Nor do they go farther into a subject than
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to bolster it by various means. Having done this, they say that these are matters of faith, and that people ought to believe. [4] I have talked about this with angels who told me that the difference between the wisdom of angels of the third heaven and that of angels of the first heaven is like the difference between clear and cloudy. They proceeded to compare the wisdom of angels of the third heaven to a splendid palace full of everything functional, surrounded on all sides by parks, which in turn were encircled by splendid things of many sorts. They told me that these angels, being involved in true elements of wisdom, were able to go into the palace and see everything, to walk in the parks at will, and to enjoy it all. It is quite different for people who apply logic to matters of truth, and even more different for people who debate about them. Since they do not see matters of truth in the light of what is true, deriving them instead from other people or from the literal meaning of the Word, which they do not understand in depth, they say that people should believe these things or have faith, and then are not willing to have a deeper view of things intrude. Angels say that such folk are not able to reach the first threshold of the palace, let alone go inside or walk in the parks, since they stop at the first step. It is different with people who are involved in matters of actual truth. Nothing holds them back from moving and walking without restriction. For true things, seen, lead where they will, even into broad meadows, because each single element of truth is subject to infinite extension, and is bound up with an abundance of others. [5] These angels went on to say that the wisdom of angels of the inmost heaven consists primarily of seeing Divine and heavenly matters in individual objects, and marvels in a sequence of several. For everything visible to their eyes has a correspondence; so that when they see a palace and gardens, their focus does not become fixed on the kind of thing that lies before their eyes. Instead, they see the inner realities from which these things stem, to which they therefore correspond. This occurs with constant variation, depending on the appearance of the objects, so that they see countless elements in a pattern and connection, which so delights their minds that they seem to be taken out of themselves (on the proposition that everything visible in the heavens corresponds to things Divine from the Lord within angels, see above, nn. 170-176). 271. The reason angels of the third heaven are like this is that they are involved in love for the Lord, and this love opens the more inward reaches of the mind to the third level, and is what receives everything proper to wisdom. We also need to realize that angels of the inmost heaven are constantly being perfected in wisdom, in a different way from that characteristic of angels of the outmost heaven. Angels of the inmost heaven do not store Divine true things away in their memories, or make some kind of information out of them. Rather, the moment they hear them, they grasp them and put them to work in life. This is why Divine true things stay with them as though inscribed; for anything that is actually applied to life is inside in this way. The situation is different with angels of the outmost heaven. They do store Divine true things away in their memories at first, and conceal them in information. From there, they retrieve and use them to perfect their understanding, willing them and applying them to life without any inward perception of their truth. Consequently, everything is relatively cloudy to them. It is worth noting that angels of the third heaven are perfected in wisdom by what they hear, not by what they see. Whatever they hear from exhortation does not go into their memories, but directly into their perception and intention, and becomes part of their life. But whatever these angels see with their eyes does go into their memories, and they apply logic to it and talk about it. This may serve to show that the path of hearing is their path of wisdom. This too has its source in correspondence, for the ear corresponds to obedience, and obedience has to do with living. But the eye corresponds to intelligence, and intelligence has to
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do with doctrine. The state of these angels is described very often in the Word, as in Jeremiah: I will put my law in their mind, and write it on their heart; ... No longer will anyone teach his friend, or anyone his brother, saying Know Jehovah, for all that exist will know me. from the least of them to the greatest of them. (Jeremiah 31:33-34) And in Matthew: Let your speech be Yes, yes, No, no, anything beyond this comes from what is evil. (Matthew 5:37) The reason anything beyond this comes from what is evil is that it does not come from the Lord. For the true things that are within the angels of the third heaven do come from the Lord because they are involved in a love for the Lord. Love for the Lord, in that heaven, is willing and doing what is Divine and true, for the Divine-True is the Lord in heaven. 272. Another factor beside the ones just cited bears on the ability of angels to accept this kind of wisdoma major factor in heaven, namely their lack of love of self. For to the extent that anyone is free of this love, he is able to become wise in Divine matters. It is this love that closes the more inward realms and turns them toward itself. As a result, all people in whom this love is dominant are in darkness as far as matters of heaven are concerned, no matter how much light they have in matters of the world. But because angels on their part are free of this love, they are involved in wisdoms light. In fact, the heavenly loves they are involved in (love for the Lord and love toward the neighbor) open the more inward reaches because these loves come from the Lord and the Lord Himself is within them (on the proposition that these loves make up heaven overall and form the heaven within each particular individual, see above, nn. 13-19). Because heavenly loves do open the more inward reaches to the Lord, all angels turn their faces toward the Lord (n. 142). In the spiritual world it is in fact love that turns each individuals more inward elements toward itself; and wherever love turns the more inward elements, it turns the face. For there the face acts as one with what lies within, and is actually the outer form of the more inward things. Since a love does turn the more inward elements and the face toward itself, it bonds itself to them as well, for love is a spiritual bond. Consequently, it also conveys its own possessions to them. As a result of this turning, with the consequent bonding and sharing, angels have wisdom (on the proposition that all bonding in the spiritual world occurs according to turning, see n. 255 above). 273. Angels are constantly becoming more perfect in wisdom. However, they cannot to eternity become perfect to any extent that could cause a ratio to exist between their wisdom and the Lords Divine Wisdom. For the Lords Divine Wisdom is infinite, while that of angels is finite, and no ratio exists between the infinite and the finite. 274. Since wisdom perfects angels and makes up their life, and since heaven with its good things flows in for each individual in proportion to his wisdom, everyone there longs for wisdom and hungers for it, very much the way a hungry man longs for food. Information, discernment, and wisdom are spiritual nourishment, the way food is natural nourishment; they do correspond to each other. 275. The angels in one heaveneven the angels in one community of heavenare not in like wisdom, but in unlike. Those in the center are in the greatest wisdom, those round about to the
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borders in less. The decline in wisdom proportional to the distance from the center is like the decline of a light pointed into darkness (see above, nn. 43, 128). For angels, the light too is at a level of intensity parallel to that of their wisdom, because heavens light is Divine Wisdom, and everyone is in light in proportion to his acceptance of that wisdom (on heavens light and the variable acceptance of it, see above, nn. 126-132).

31. ANGELS STATE OF INNOCENCE IN HEAVEN

276. Few people in this world know the nature and quality of innocence; no one who is involved in what is evil knows at all. There is something visible to the eyes, something about the face, speech, and motions particularly of children, but people do not know what this is, and are still more ignorant of the fact that this is where heaven conceals itself within man. To make this known, I should like to proceed step by step, speaking first about the innocence of childhood, then about the innocence of wisdom, and finally about heavens state in respect to innocence. 277. The innocence of childhood (or of children) is not real innocence, since it resides only in their outward form, not in their inner one. It is, however, possible to learn from it what innocence is like. It actually glows from their faces, some of their motions, and their beginnings of speech. It qualifies their lack of internal thought; for they do not yet know what is good or what is evil, what is true or what is false, and thought stems from these knowledges. [2] As a result, they have no self-generated discretion, no intention or resolution, and therefore no purpose of anything evil. They have no selfhood amassed out a love of self and the world. They do not credit themselves with anything, ascribing to their parents everything they have received. They are contented and happy with little trifles given them as presents. They have no worry about food and clothing, or about what is going to happen. They do not focus their attention on the world and covet a great ninny things from it. They love their parents, their nurse, and their little friends, with whom they innocently play. They allow themselves to be led; they listen and obey. [3] Because they are in this state, they accept everything by means of life. They have, as a result, without knowing the source, suitable habits; they have speech; they have the first elements of memory and thought, which their state of innocence helps them accept and absorb. But as stated above, this innocence is outward because it belongs to the body only, not to the mind. Actually, their mind has not yet taken shape. For the mind is understanding and intention, consequently thought and affection. [4] I have been told from heaven that children are especially under the Lords guardianship, with an inflow from the inmost heaven, where the state is one of innocence; also that this inflow passes through their more inward reaches, exerting no influence in transit except by means of innocence. Also, this is why innocence comes out in the face and in certain motions; further, this is what profoundly moves parents, causing the love that, is called storge [a Greek word for parental affection]. 278. The innocence of wisdom is genuine innocence because it is inward. For it belongs to the mind itself, that is therefore, to intention itself and consequently to understanding. When there is innocence within these functions, there is wisdom as well, for wisdom is proper to them. This is why it is said in heaven that innocence lives in wisdom, and that an angels wisdom is
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in proportion to his innocence. Angels support the truth of this with the fact that people who are in a state of innocence do not credit anything good to themselves, but rather attribute and ascribe everything they have received to the Lord. Further, there is the fact that they want to be led by Him, not by themselves. They love everything that is good, they take pleasure in everything that is true; since they both know and perceive that loving what is good (that is, willing and doing it) is loving the Lord, and loving what is true is loving the neighbor. They live content with what they have, whether it be little or much, knowing that they receive as much as is good for them. They have few things if a little is good for them, and many things if an abundance is good for them. They do not know what is good for themonly the Lord knows; in His sight all the things He provides are eternal. [2] So they are not worried about what is going to happen. They refer to worry about what is going to happen as anxiety about tomorrows affairs, which, according to them, is suffering about the loss or lack of things that are not needed for lifes useful employments. Socially, they never act from a purpose of what is evil, but from what is good, right, and honest. They call acting for a purpose of what is evil, cunning, something they flee like a snakes venom, because it is utterly opposed to. innocence. Because there is nothing they love more than being led by the Lord, and because they give Him credit for everything they receive, they are kept away from their selfhood; and to the extent that they are kept away from their selfhood, the Lord flows in. This is why the things they hear from Himwhether by means of the Word or by its expositionthey do not store away in memory, but promptly obey, that is, intend and do. Intention is their very memory. These angels usually seem artless in outward form, but they are wise and skillful within. They are the ones meant by the Lord, Be wise as serpents, and artless as doves. (Matthew 10:16) This is the nature of the innocence called the innocence of wisdom. [3] Now innocence credits itself with nothing good, but ascribes everything good to the Lord; it loves to be led by the Lord in this way, which results in an acceptance of everything good and true, the source of wisdom. For this reason, man has been so created as to be in innocence (albeit outward innocence) during childhood; and when he grows old he is in inward innocence that is, so created as to come through the outward into the inward, and again into the outward because of the inward. Consequently, as a person ages he deteriorates physically and becomes like a child all over again, but like a wise childthat is, an angel. For in the highest sense, a wise child is an angel. This is why child in the Word means someone innocent, and old man means a wise person with innocence in him. 279. Something like this happens with everyone who is being regenerated. Regeneration is rebirth, as far as the spiritual person is concerned. First, the individual is guided into the innocence of infancy, meaning that he knows nothing true and is capable of nothing good on his own, only from the Lord, and that he wants and longs for these things simply because the one is true and the other is good. These are granted by the Lord as the person advances in age. First he is guided into knowledge about them, then from knowledge about into understanding, and finally from understanding into wisdom, with innocence ever in attendanceinnocence meaning, as already stated, that he knows nothing true and is capable of nothing good on his own, only from the Lord. Apart from this faith and a perception of it, no one can receive any element of heaven. The innocence of wisdom resides principally within it. 280. Since innocence is being led by the Lord rather than by self, all the people in heaven are involved in innocence. For all the people who are there love being led by the Lord. They know, in
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fact, that leading oneself is being led by selfhood; and selfhood is loving oneself; and anyone who loves himself does not let himself be led by anyone else. This is why an angel is in heaven to the extent that he is involved in innocence. That is, he is to this extent involved in the Divine-Good and the Divine-True; for involvement in these is being in heaven. The heavens are therefore distinguished according to innocence. People who are in the outmost of first heaven are in innocence of the first or outmost level. People who are in the intermediate or second heaven are m innocence of the second or intermediate level. People who are in the inmost or third heaven, then, are in innocence of the third or inmost level. Consequently, they are the very innocencies of heaven, since they more than others love being led by the Lord like children by their father. So too, they accept into their intention the DivineTrue that they hear either directly from the Lord or indirectly through the Word and explanations of it, and so apply it to their lives. This is why they have so much more wisdom than angels of the lower heavens (see nn. 270-271). Because they are like this, these angels are nearest to the Lord, the source of their innocence. They are also kept apart from their selfhood to the point where they virtually live in the Lord. They look artless in outward .form, even like children in the sight of angels of the lower heavensvery small. They look like people who are not very wise, even though they are the wisest of heavens angels. They realize, in fact, that on their own they have no wisdom, and that being wise is recognizing this fact. Then too, what they do know is practically nothing in comparison to what they do not know. Knowing, recognizing, and grasping this is, in their words, the first step toward wisdom. These angels are naked, because nakedness corresponds to innocence. 281. I have talked with angels about innocence a good deal, and have received the following information. Innocence is the inner Reality [Esse] of everything good; therefore a good thing is good to the extent that it contains innocence. As a result, wisdom is wisdom to the extent that it derives from innocence, and so are love, charity, and faith. This is why no one can enter heaven unless he has innocence, which is what the Lord meant by saying, Let the children come to me; do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of the heavens. I tell you truly, anyone who does not receive the kingdom of the heavens like a child, will not enter it. (Matthew 19:14; 18:3; Mark 10:14-15; Luke 18:16-17) Here as elsewhere in the Word, children means people who are innocent. The condition of innocence is described by the Lord (Matthew 6:24-25), but in pure correspondences. The reason why any good thing is good to the extent that it contains innocence, is that everything good is from the Lord, and innocence is willingness to be led by the Lord. I have also been informed that what is true cannot be bonded to what is good, or vice versa, except by means of innocence. This is another reason why an angel is not an angel of heaven unless there is innocence within him. For heaven is not within anyone unless what is true is bonded to what is good within him. This bonding of the true and the good is called the heavenly marriage, and the heavenly marriage is heaven. I have also been informed that genuine marriage love derives its manifest form from innocence, since it comes from the bonding of the good and the true that the two minds, husbands and wifes, are involved in. As this bonding descends, it makes itself known in the form of marriage love; for the married partners, like their minds, love each other. This is the source of childlike, innocent play in marriage love. 282. Since innocence is the actual inner reality of what is good in heavens angels, we can see that the Divine-Good emanating from the Lord is innocence itself. For that is the Good that flows
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into angels, influences their inmost elements, and arranges and fits them for the acceptance of every good thing of heaven. A similar thing happens in infants, whose more inward reaches are not only formed by the passage of innocence from the Lord, but constantly fitted and arranged to accept the good of heavenly love. For the good quality of innocence works from the center, being the inner reality of everything good, as mentioned above. We may conclude from this that all innocence is from the Lord. This is why the Lord is called the Lamb in the Word, since a lamb means innocence. Because innocence is the central element of everything good in heaven, it so influences minds that people who feel it (which happens when an angel of the inmost heaven draws near) seem to themselves not to be under their own authority, to be moved by such delight, virtually transported, that all the worlds delight is nothing in comparison. I say this from direct experience. 283. All people who are involved in the goodness of innocence are influenced by innocence, With the influence being proportional to the involvement in that good. But people who are not involved in the goodness of innocence are not influenced by it. So all the people who are in hell are utterly opposed to innocence. They do not know what innocence is. On the contrary, their nature is such that the more innocent a person is, the greater is their ardor to inflict harm on him. This is why they cannot stand the sight of children. The moment they see them, they are on fire with a vicious passion to hurt. This may serve to show that mans selfhood, and consequently his love of self, are opposed to innocence. For all the people who are in hell are involved in their selfhood and therefore in love of self.

32. THE STATE OF PEACE IN HEAVEN

284. Anyone who has not been involved in heavens peace cannot grasp the nature of the peace angels experience. As long as a person is involved in his body, he cannot accept heavens peace and therefore cannot perceive it, since mans perception is on the natural level. In order to perceive it, he needs to be of such nature that he can be lifted and led out of the body as to his thought and made present in the spirit, thereby being with angels. Since I have perceived heavens peace in this manner, I am able to describe it. I cannot put into words what it is like intrinsically, since human words are inadequate. I can only describe in words what it is like in comparison to that peace of mind that belongs to people who are content in God. 285. There are two inmost elements of heaven, innocence and peace. They are called inmost because they come directly from the Lord. Innocence is the source of everything good in heaven; arid peace is the source of all the delight of what is goodevery good thing has its own delight. Both of themwhat is good as well as what is pleasantbelong to love. For what is loved is called good, and is also felt as pleasant. It then follows that these two inmost elements, innocence and peace, come from the Lords Divine Love, and affect angels from their very center. On innocence as the inmost element of what is good, see the chapter immediately preceding, where the subject was the state of innocence of heavens angels. The present chapter treats of peace as
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the inmost element of what is pleasant arising from the good of innocence. 286. We may first state the source of peace. There is a Divine peace in the Lord, arising from the union within Him of the Divine Itself and the Divine-Human. The Divine side of peace in heaven is from the Lord, arising from His bond with heavens angels, and specifically from the bonding of what is good and what is true in each individual angel. These are the sources of peace. We can conclude from this that peace in the heavens is something Divine, most deeply touching everything good there will happinessessentially a Divine joy of the Lords Divine Love because of His bond with heaven and with each individual there. This joy, perceived by the Lord in angels and by angels because of the Lord, is peace. From it, by secondary development, angels receive everything blessed, pleasant, and happythat is, what people call heavenly joy. 287. These being the sources of peace, the Lord is called the Prince of peace, and states that peace comes from Him and is in Him. Then too, angels are called angels of peace, and heaven the heaven of peace, as in the following passages: A boy is born to us; a Son is given us, on whose shoulder sovereignty shall rest. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, God, Hero, Father of eternity, Prince of peace. There shall be no end of the increase of sovereignty and peace. (Isaiah 9:6-7) Jesus said, I leave peace with you; I give you my peace. Not as the world gives do I give to you. (John 14:27) I have said these things so that you would have peace in me. (John 16:33) May Jehovah lift His face to you, and give you peace. (Nu. 6:26) The angels of peace weep bitterly; the paths are destroyed. (Isaiah 33:7-8) The work of justice shall be peace, . . . and my people shall live in the home of peace.(Isaiah 32:17-18) [2] We may verify the fact that peace in the Word means Divine and heavenly peace from other passages where it is mentioned, such as the following: Isaiah 52:7, 54:10, 59:8; Jeremiah 16:5, 25:37, 29:11; Haggai 2:9; Zechariah 8:12; Psalm 37:37; et aI. Since peace means the Lord and heaven (also heavenly joy and the delight of what is good), the greeting of ancient times was, Peace be with you, and consequently still is today. The Lord encouraged this, saying to the disciples whom He sent out, When you enter a house, say first, Peace be to this house. If a son of peace be there, your peace will rest upon it. (Luke 10:5-6) Then too, the Lord Himself said, Peace be with you (John 20:19, 21, 26) when he appeared to the apostles. [3] A state of peace is also to be understood in the Word by this that Jehovah said, I have smelled the scent of quietness (as in Exodus 29:18, 25, 41;-Leviticus 1:9, 13, 17; 2:9; 6:15, 21; 23:12, 13, 18; Numbers 15:3, 7, 13; 28:6, 8, 13; 29:2, 6, 8, 13, 36). In the heavenly sense, a perception of peace is meant by the scent of quietness. Because peace does mean all thisthe union in the Lord of His Divine Itself with the DivineHuman, the Lords bond with heaven, the church, and all the people in heaven and the church who accept Himthe Sabbath was established as a reminder to them, was given its name from quietness or peace, and was the holiest symbol of the Church. So too the Lord called Himself the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8, Mark 2:27-28; Luke 6:5).

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288. Heavens peace, being something Divine which most deeply touches with blessedness the good itself which is in angels, does not reach their conscious perception except as follows: through a pleasure of heart when they are engaged in the good proper to their lives, through a sense of fitness when they hear something true that is in harmony with their good, and through an exhilaration of mind when they perceive their bonding. From this source, though, it flows into all the deeds and thoughts of their lives, presenting itself to all outward appearance as joy. [2] But as to nature and amount, peace varies in the heavens in proportion to the innocence of the people who are there, since innocence and peace walk hand in hand. For as stated above, innocence is the source of everything good in heaven, and peace the source of everything pleasant belonging to that good. This enables us to establish the possibility of saying here about a state of peace the same things said in the last chapter about the state of innocence in heaven, innocence and peace being connected like what is good and what is pleasant about it. For what is good is detected by its own proper pleasantness, and what is pleasant is recognized by its goodness. This being the case, we can see that angels of the inmost or third heaven are involved in the third or inmost level of innocence. Also angels of the lower heavens are involved in lower levels of peace because they are in lesser levels of innocence (see above, n. 280). [3] The inseparability of innocence and peace (like that of what is good and what is pleasant about it) is observable in children, who, being in innocence, are also in peace. And since they are in peace, everything within them is playful. But the peace within infants is an outward peace; inward peace, like inward innocence comes only with wisdom. Since it does come only with wisdom, it comes only as what is good and what is true are joined together, for this is the source of wisdom. Heavenly or angelic peace comes to people on earth who are involved in wisdom because of the joining together of what is good and what is true, and who consequently see themselves as content in God. But these qualities, as long as people are living in the world, lie hidden away in their more inward recesses, being uncovered when they leave their bodies and enter heaven, for then the more inward recesses are opened. 289. Since this is the way Divine peace arisesfrom the Lords bond with heaven, and in the individual case of each angel, from the bonding of what is good and what is trueangels are in a state of peace when they are in a state of love; for then what is good is joined to what is true within them (on the regular fluctuation of angels states, see above, nn. 154-160). Something like this happens with a person who is being regenerated. When the bonding of the good and the true takes place within him (which happens especially after temptations), he enters a condition of joy stemming from heavenly peace. That peace is like the morn or dawn in springtime, when, once the night is done, all things of earth begin to live anew from the rising of the sun; the scent of leaves is wafted here and there, awakened by the dew that falls from heaven; the gentle warmth of spring makes fertile the soil and grants as well a joy to human minds. This is because morning and dawn in springtime correspond to the state of peace of angels in heaven (see n. 155). 290. I have also talked with angels about peace. I have told them that in the world, peace is defined as a time when wars and hostilities between nations cease, or enmity and strife between individuals, together with a belief that inner peace is peace of mind because problems have been taken away especially a calm and pleasure at the success of business ventures. Angels have told me, however, that quietness of mind, calm and pleasure at the removal of problems and the success of business ventures, may look like peace, but that they are not peace except in people who are involved in some heavenly good because peace does not
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occur except within that good. Peace actually flows from the Lord into the inmost part of such people, descends and flows down into their lower levels, and presents a peace of the inner mind [mentisl, a calm of the outer mind [animi], and a joy in consequence. But for people who are involved in something evil, peace does not occur. Something like quietness, calm, and pleasure does appear when they get what they want, but this is outward only, not at all inner. In fact, enmity, hatred, revenge, and many evil desires are raging within, with the outer mind being borne into these desires the moment such people see someone who is not on their side, and breaking out openly unless there is also fear present. Angels have also told me that this is why such peoples pleasure dwells in madness, while the pleasure of people involved in what is good dwells in wisdom. The difference is like that between hell and heaven.

33. HEAVENS UOND WITH THE HUMAN RACE

291. It is known within the church that everything good is from God and nothing from man, and that it is not right therefore for anyone to count anything good to be his own. It is also known that what is evil is from the devil. This is why people who are speaking from the churchs doctrine describe people who behave well (and people who talk reverently and preach) as being led by the Lord, in contrast to people who behave badly and talk irreverently. There could be no substance to all this unless there were a bond between man and heaven, and a bond with hell, and unless these were bonds with his intention and his understanding. For it is out of these that the body acts and the mouth speaks. Let us describe what this connection is like. 292. Good spirits and evil spirits are in company with each individual. Through the good spirits a person has a bond with heaven; through the evil spirits he has a bond with hell. These spirits are in a World of Spirits which is halfway between heaven and hell, and will be treated explicitly below. When these spirits come to someone, they enter his whole memory and consequently his whole thought process. Evil spirits enter those elements of memory and thought that are evil, good spirits those elements of memory and thought that are good. The spirits have no awareness whatever of being with the person. While they are there, rather, they believe that all the things that belong to the persons memory and thought are their own. Nor do they see the person, since the things that exist in our subsolar world do not fall within their range of vision. The Lord takes the greatest possible care lest spirits know that they are with someone. If in fact they should become aware of this, they would talk with him, and then the evil spirits would destroy him. For evil spirits, being bonded with hell, have no greater desire than to destroy someonenot only as to his soul (that is, his faith and love), but even as to his body. It is different when they do not talk with the person. Then they are not aware that what they are thinking, what they are saying among themselves, comes from him. For they do talk among themselves from the person as a source, yet in the belief that the matters are their own. Each one values and loves what belongs to him. So the spirits are bound to love and value the person, even though they are not aware of it. By many years of constant experience, this nature of the bonding of spirits with man has become so well known to me that nothing is more familiar.
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293. The reason spirits who are in contact with hell are in touch with man as well, is that man is born into involvement with all kinds of evil things, with his earliest life made up of nothing else. So unless there were spirits of his own quality in touch with him, he would not be able to live, let alone to be led away from his evils and reformed. So he is kept in his own life by evil spirits, and kept back from it by good spirits. Because of these two, then, he is in a balance; and because he is in a balance, he is in his free state. He can be led away from evils and guided toward the good; he can also have the good grafted into him, which cannot happen unless he is in a free state. Also, the free state cannot occur for him unless spirits from hell are working from one side and spirits from heaven from the other, with the person in the middle. It has also been pointed out that man, insofar as he exists from what he inherits and therefore in his own right, would have no life unless he were allowed to be involved in something evil, nor if he were not in a free state. It has also been pointed out that he cannot be compelled toward the good, and that that which is compelled does not stick; similarly, that anything good which a person accepts in a free state is grafted into his intention and becomes virtually a part of him. This is why man has communication with hell and communication with heaven. 294. We may now describe the nature of heavens communication with good spirits and hells communication with evil spirits, and the consequent nature of the bond of heaven and hell with man. All spirits (who are in the World of Spirits) are in touch with either heaven or hellthe evil ones with hell and the good ones with heaven. Heaven is divided into communities, and so is hell. Each spirit is related to a particular community. He also continues in existence as the result of an inflow from that source; so he acts in unison with it. This is why man is joined to heaven and hell as he is joined to spirits, each individual with the community he is involved in as far as his own affectionor his own love-is concerned. For all heavens communities are distinguished according to affections for the good and the true, and all hells communities are distinguished according to affections for the evil and the false (on heavens communities, see above, nn. 41-45, then nn. 148-151). 295. The spirits connected to a person are of the same quality as the person himself in affection or love. But the good spirits are put in connection with him by the Lord, while the evil ones are invited by the person himself. However, the spirits with a person are changed in keeping with changes of his affections. So he has some spirits in early childhood, others in later childhood, others in young adulthood and maturity, and still others in old age. There are present in early childhood spirits who are in innocence, who therefore are in communication with the heaven of innocence, which is the inmost or third heaven. In later childhood, spirits are present who are involved in an affection for learning, who are therefore in communication with the outmost or first heaven. In young adulthood and maturity, spirits are present who are involved in an affection for what is true and what is good, hence in intelligence, who are therefore in communication with the second or intermediate heaven. But in old age, spirits are present who are involved in wisdom and innocence, who are therefore in communication with the inmost or third heaven. This connection, however, occurs from the Lord with people who can be reformed and regenerated. It is different with people who cannot be reformed and regenerated. Good spirits are connected with them also, so that they can be restrained from evil by them as far as possible, but their direct contact is with evil spirits who are in communication with hell. As a result1 they have the same kinds of spirits as they themselves are as people. If they are in love with themselves, or with money, or with revenge, or with adultery, similar spirits are with them. These spirits virtually take up residence in their evil affections. To the extent that the person
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cannot be restrained from an evil act by the good spirits, they set him afire. And to the extent that an affection dominates him, they cling and do not depart. So an evil person is bonded with hell, and a good person is bonded with heaven. 296. This government of man by the Lord through spirits occurs because man is not in heavens design. In fact, he is born into involvement in evil things which belong to hellexactly opposite, therefore, to the Divine design. So he has to be brought back into the design, and he cannot be brought back except indirectly, through spirits. It would be different if man were born into involvement in the good which is in accord with heavens design. Then he would not be governed by the Lord through spirits, but by the design itself, therefore by a general inflow. Man is governed by this general inflow in respect to the things that come from his thought and intention into actin respect therefore to his speech and behavior. For both of these flow in a natural pattern, so that the spirits attached to the person have no share in his speech and behavior. Animals as well are governed by the general inflow from the spiritual world because they are involved in the pattern of their life, unable to overthrow or destroy it because they have no rational faculty. On the distinction between people and animals, (see above n. 39). 297. Still on the subject of heavens bond with the human race, it is worth knowing that the Lord Himself flows into every individual in accordance with heavens patterninto his inmost recesses as well as into things outermostand arranges them to receive heaven. He rules mans outmost elements from his inmost ones and his inmost ones from his outmost ones at the same time, keeping together in the way everything, in general and in detail. This inflow of the Lord is called the direct inflow. The other inflow, then, which occurs by means of spirits, is called the indirect inflow. The latter is maintained by means of the former. The direct inflow, which belongs to the Lord Himself, is from His own Divine-Human, and is into the individuals intention and through his intention into his understanding. So it is into the persons good, and through the good into what he has that is true. Or (which is the same thing) it is into love, and through love into his faithnot the other way around, and surely not into faith without love or into something true apart from something good, or into an understanding that does not arise from intention. This Divine inflow is constant, and among good people is received into what is good, but not among evil people. Among these latter it is either rejected, stifled, or corrupted. This is the cause of their evil life, which spiritually understood is a death. 298. The spirits who are with an individualboth those bonded with heaven and those bonded with hellnever flow into the individual out of their own memory and consequent thought. For if they did flow in out of their own thought, the individual would be wholly unaware that the things that belonged to them were not his own (see above, n. 256). Rather, an affection of a love for what is good and true flows through them into the person from heaven, and an affection for what is evil and false from hell. To the extent, then, that the individuals own affection is in harmony with what is flowing in, this is accepted by him in his thought, because mans more inward thought is completely in accord with his affection or love. To the extent that it is not in harmony, however, it is not accepted. Thus we can see that, since thought is not inserted into a person by spirits, but only an affection for something good or an affection for something evil, man has a choice because he has an area of freedom. Thus in thought he can accept the good and reject the evil, for he knows from the Word what is good and what is evil. Whatever he accepts in thought because of affection becomes part of him; whatever he does not accept in thought because of affection
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does not become part of him. This allows us to conclude what the inflow in man of the good from heaven is like, and what the inflow of evil from hell is like. 299. I have also been allowed to learn the source of mans anxiety, distress of mind, and the more inward sadness known as depression. There are spirits who are not yet closely bonded with hell because they are still in their first state (these will be described later, when we discuss the World of Spirits). These love disorganized and vicious things that are like elements of food in the process of becoming fecal matter in the intestines. They are present therefore whenever such things occupy a person, because these matters are pleasant to them; and because of their own affection, they say evil things to each other. The affection of their speech flows from this into the individual. If this affection is opposed to that of the individual, he is affected by sadness and depressive anxiety; if however it agrees, he is affected by delight and exhilaration. These spirits appear next to the bellysome on its left side, some on its right, some lower, some higher, nearer and farther away differently, that is, depending on the affections they are involved in. From an abundance of evidence, I have been granted knowledge and corroboration that this is the source of anxiety of mind. I have seen them; I have heard them; I have felt the anxieties that welled up from them. I have talked with them. They have been driven off and the anxiety has ceased; they have returned and the anxiety has returned. I have precisely observed its increase and decrease in proportion to their approach and departure. So it has become clear to me why some people, who do not know what conscience is because they have no conscience, blame its distress on their intestines. 300. Heavens bond with man is not like the bond of person with person, but is rather a bond of more inward elements that belong to his mind, thus one that pertains to his spiritual or inner person. There is also a bond with his natural or outer person through correspondences, which bond will be discussed in the next chapter, where the topic will be Heavens Bond with Man through the Word. 301. The proposition that heavens bond with the human race and the human races bond with heaven are so arranged that one is maintained by the other will also be presented in the next chapter. 302. I have talked with angels about heavens bond with the human race, noting that while a churchman might say that everything good is from the Lord and that angels are with man, few of them believe that angels are intimately connected to man, and fewer still that they are within his thought and affection. The angels have replied that they knew this faith and profession existed in the world, especially within the churchwhich surprised them, since within the church is the Word, which teaches people about heaven and its bond with man. Yet such a bond exists that a person cannot have the least thought without spirits present; and his spiritual life depends on this bond. They have stated that the reason for the ignorance of this fact was mans belief that he lives on his own, apart from any connection with the First Reality [Essej of life, and his lack of awareness that his connection exists through the heavens. Yet if this connection were disengaged, a person would instantly drop dead. If people only believed the way things really arethat everything good is from the Lord and everything evil from hellthen they would not make anything good in themselves a matter of
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merit, nor would anything evil be charged to them. For in that case, they would focus on the Lord in everything good that they thought and did, and everything evil that flowed in they would throw back into the hell it came from. But since people do not believe in any inflow from heaven or from hell, and since then in their judgment everything they think and wish is within them and therefore from them, they make the evil their own, and defile with a sense of merit the good that flows in.

34. HEAVENS BOND WITH MAN THROUGH THE WORD

303. People who think from a more inward rationality are able to see that there is a connection of all things through intermediate things with a First, and that anything which is not connected disintegrates. They do know, when they think, that nothing can exist on its owneverything needs something prior to itself, so everything derives from a First. They know that the connection with the prior is like the connection of an effect with its efficient cause. When the efficient cause is taken away from its effect, then the effect breaks up and collapses. Learned people, having held this opinion, have both seen and stated that existence is a perpetual coming into being, that all things therefore are constantly coming into being or existing from a First because they [originally] came into being from it. But there is. no way to describe briefly the nature of the connection of each particular entity with its prior and therefore with the First which is the source of everything, since this is varied and diverse. We can say broadly only that there is a connection of the natural world with the spiritual world; and that this is the source of the correspondence of all the things that exist in the natural world with all the things that exist in the spiritual world (on this correspondence, see nn. 103-115); then that there is a connection, and consequently a correspondence, of all the elements of man with all the elements of heaven (on this, see also nn. 87-102 above). 304. Man has been so created that he has a connection and bond with the Lord, but only an association with angels. The reason he has only an association with angels, not a bond, is that from creation man is like an angel as far as the more inward reaches of his mind are concernedhe has intention like an angels and understanding like an angels. This is why a person becomes an angel after death and has wisdom like angels wisdom then, if he has lived according to the Divine design. So when we mention mans bond with heaven, we understand this to mean his bond with the Lord and his association with angels. For heaven is not heaven because of anything that belongs to angels, but because of the Lords Divine (on the proposition that the Lords Divine constitutes heaven, see above, nfl. 7-12). [21 But over and above this, man has something that angels do nota presence not only in the spiritual world as to his more inward elements, but a presence in the natural world at the same time as to his more outward elements. His more outward elements, which are in the natural world, are all the elements of his natural or outer memory, and the things from that source that belong to his thoughts and imagination. In general, these are insights and data with their enjoyments and pleasures, to the extent that they have a worldly flavor, and also many pleasures that belong to the bodys sensory capacities. Beyond these, there are the senses themselves, and speech, and behavior. All of these are the outmosts in which the Lords Divine inflow comes to rest; for this inflow does not stay in anything intermediate, but persists through to its outmosts.
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This enables us to conclude that the outmost form of the Divine design is in man; and since this is the outmost, it is the basis and foundation. [3] To proceed, then, we note that the Lords Divine inflow does not stop in anything intermediate, but as stated persists to its outmosts. We note that the intermediate through which it passes is the angelic heaven, while its outmost is in man. We note that nothing exists which is not connected. From these reasons, it follows that heavens connection with the human race is of such nature that one exists by reason of the other-the situation of the human race without heaven would be like that of a chain whose shackle was gone, and the situation of heaven without a human race like that of a house without a foundation. 305. But since man has broken this connection with heaven (which he has done by turning his more inward elements away from heaven, toward the world and himself, through a love of himself and the world, so withdrawing himself that he no longer serves as a basis and foundation for heaven), the Lord has arranged an intermediate to be in place of heavens basis and foundation, and to join heaven and man together. This intermediate is the Word. How the Word serves as such an intermediate is presented at some length in Arcana Coelestia. All this material may be found collected in the booklet, The White Horse Mentioned in the Apocalypse and also in the .Appendix to the Heavenly Doctrine. 306. I have been taught from heaven that the earliest people had a direct revelation, since their more inward elements were turned toward heaven. Further, this was the source of the Lords bond with the human race at that time. Later, however, this kind of direct revelation no longer occurred, but rather an indirect revelation by means of correspondences. In fact, every element of their Divine worship was made up of these, so that the churches of that era were called representative churches. In those days they knew what a correspondence was and what a representation was; they knew that all things on earth corresponded to spiritual things in heaven and in the churchor depicted (repraesentarent] them, which is the same thing. So the natural entities which were the outward forms of their worship served them as means for thinking spirituallythat is, thinking with angels. After the knowledge with correspondences and representations was forgotten, the Word was composed, in which all the words and their meanings are correspondences, so that they have within them the spiritual or inner meaning in which angels are involved. As a result, when a person reads the Word and grasps it according to the meaning of the letter, angels are grasping it as to its inner or spiritual meaning. Actually, all the thinking of angels is spiritual, while all the thinking of man is natural. These kinds of thinking do indeed look different, but they are nevertheless one because they correspond. This is why, after man moved away from heaven and broke the tie, the Lord arranged a way of bonding heaven with man through the Word. 307. I should like to illustrate how heaven is connected with man through the Word by means of some passages from the Word. In the Apocalypse, the New Jerusalem is described in the following words: I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the former heaven and the former earth had passed away and I saw the holy city Jerusa1cm. . . descending from God out of heaven. . . . The city was foursquare, its length equal to its width; and the angel measured the city with a reed, to twelve thousand furlongs; and the angel measured the city with a reed, to twelve thousand furlongs; the length, width, and height. . . were equal. And he measured its wall, a hundred and forty-four cubits; the measure of the man, which is that of the angel: . The walls construction was of jasper; but the city itself was of pure gold, and like pure glass;
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and the walls foundations. . . wereadorned with every precious stone. . . . The twelve gates were twelve pearls; . . . and the streets of the city were pure gold like clear glass. (Rev. 21:1, 2, 16-19, 21) The person on earth who reads this understands it only in its literal meaningnamely that the visible heaven is going to perish, and earth with it, and that a new heaven is going to come into being. Then the holy city Jerusalem will descend on a new earth, and in all its specifications will be as described. But the angels who are with this person understand it quite differently. To be specific, they understand spiritually the details which the person understands naturally. [2] By anew heaven and a new earth, they understand a new church. By the city Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven they understand its heavenly teaching, revealed by the Lord. By the length, width, and height which are equal, and by the twelve thousand furlongs, they understand all the good and true elements of that teaching in a single grasp. By its wall, they understand the true things that keep it safe. By the walls dimension, a hundred and fortyfour cubits which is the measure of the man, which is that of the angel, they understand all these protective true elements in a single grasp, and what their quality is. By its twelve gates which were of pearls, they understand true elements that introduce pearls do mean such true elements. By the walls foundations made of precious stones, they understand the insights on which the teaching is based. By the gold like pure glass, the substance of the city and its street, they understand the good that belongs to love, which makes the teaching and its true elements radiant. Angels do comprehend all these things in this fashion-not, that is, the way man does. Mans natural ideas do in this manner make a transition to spiritual ideas among angels, without their knowing anything of the Words literal meaning, as for example about the new heaven, the new earth, the new city Jerusalem, its wall, the walls foundations, or the dimensions. Still, angels thoughts constantly make one with mans thoughts because they correspond. They make a one almost like a speakers words and their import in a listener who does not focus on the words but simply on understanding. [3] This shows how heaven is bonded with man by means of the Word. Let us take another example from the Word: In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve Assyria. In that day Israel will be a third one to Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the middle of the land, which Jehovah of Hosts will bless, saying, Blessed be my people the Egyptian. and the work of my hands the Assyrian, and my inheritance Israel. (Isaiah 19:23-25) From the Words literal meaning and its inner meaning, we can decide how man thinks and how angels think when this is read. Man, from the literal meaning, thinks that the Egyptians and the Assyrians are going to be turned to God and accept Him, and that they are going to be united to the Israelite nation. But angels, in keeping with the inner meaning, think about the individual who belongs to the spiritual church that is described in that meaning, whose spiritual element is Israel, whose natural is the Egyptian, and whose rational (which is the intermediate element) is Assyria. The second and first senses still are a unity because they correspond. So when angels think spiritually and man naturally in this way, they are bonded together almost like soul and body. The Words inner meaning is then its soul, and the literal meaning is its body. This is what the Word is like throughout. This shows that it is a means of bonding heaven with man, and that its literal meaning functions as a base and foundation. 308. By means of the Word, there is also a bonding of heaven with people who are outside the
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church, where the Word does not occur. For the Lords church is universal, and exists in all people who recognize something Divine and live in charity. They are then taught by angels after death, and accept Divine truths. This is discussed below in the appropriate chapter on the heathen. In the Lords sight, the universal church in the various lands is like one person, just as heaven is (see above, nn. 59-72). But the church where the Word is found, and where the Lord is known by means of it, is like the heart and like the lungs within that person. It is recognized that all the internal organs and members of the whole body draw their life from the heart and lungs by various paths. It is this way too with that part of the human race that lives outside the church where the Word i~ found, and that makes up the members of that person. Heavens bond through the Word with people who are far away can also be compared to light which spreads in all directions from a center. There is a Divine light within the Word. The Lord is present there, with heaven, and as a result of this presence even faraway people are in light. It would be different if no Word existed. These matters can be further explained by the points made above about heavens form which determines associations and communications there. This arcanum, however, is intelligible to people who are in a spiritual light, not to people who are in a natural light only. For people who are in a spiritual light see clearly countless things which people only in a natural light do not see, or see only as a fuzzy unit. 309. If this kind of Word had not been granted on this planet, this planets people would have been cut off from heaven; and being cut off from heaven, they would no longer have been rational. Peoples rationality does in fact arise from the inflow of heavens light. The human being of this planet, you see, is of such nature that he cannot take in a direct revelation and be taught by it about Divine truths, as is possible for people who live on other planets (who have been discussed in a separate treatise). Our human being is in fact more involved in worldly matters than they, and therefore more involved in outward concerns; while it is inward elements that are receptive to revelation. If the outward elements did receive what is true, it would not be understood. This nature of our planets inhabitants is clearly visible in people within the church, who, even though they axe informed from the Word about heaven and hell and life after death, still deny it at heart. We find among these also people who grasp especially at a reputation for erudition, who on this account might be believed to be wiser than others. 310. Sometimes when I have talked with angels about the Word, I have mentioned that it is looked down on by some people because of its plain style, that absolutely nothing is known about its inner meaning, and that consequently people do not believe that so much wisdom does lie hidden within it. Angels have responded that the Words style, plain though it may seem in the literal meaning, is actually of such nature that nothing whatever is of comparable excellence, since Divine wisdom lies not just within every meaning, but within every word. They have stated that this wisdom shines out in heaven. They have been eager to declare that it was heavens light because it was the Divine-True, for the Divine-True in heaven does shine (see above, n. 132). They have also stated that without such a Word, none of heavens light would exist among people of our planet, and that there would therefore be no bonding of heaven with them. For in the measure that heavens light is present with someone this bonding exists; and in the same measure he has a revelation of the Divine-True by means of the Word. Mans ignorance of this bond (through the Words spiritual meaning corresponding to its natural meaning) stems from the fact that people on this planet do not know anything about angels spiritual thought and speech, or its difference from mans thought and speech. Unless they know this, they are wholly incapable of knowing what an inner meaning is, or therefore of knowing that this kind of bond
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can be established by means of it. They have also told me that if a person knew that this kind of meaning existed, and did his thinking from some knowledge of it when he read the Word, he would come into a more inward wisdom and would then be still more closely bonded to heaven. For by this means, he would move into concepts like those of angels.

35. HEAVEN AND HELL ARE FROM THE HUMAN RACE

311. It is quite unknown in the Christian world that heaven and hell are from the human race. In fact, it is believed that angels were created at the beginning, resulting in a heaven; and that the Devil or Satan was an angel of light, but was cast out with his faction because he became rebellious, resulting in a hell. The existence of this kind of belief in Christendom utterly amazes angels, particularly because people do not know anything at all about heaven even though it is a leading matter of the churchs doctrine. Because such ignorance is prevalent, the angels have wholeheartedly rejoiced that it has pleased the Lord to unveil to people at this time an abundance of information about heaven and about hell, so dispelling, as far as possible, the shadows which are increasing daily because the church has arrived at its end. [2] They therefore want me to declare on their behalf that in all of heaven there is not a single angel who was created at the beginning, nor is there in hell any devil who was created an angel of light and cast down. Rather, all the individuals in both heaven and hell are from the human race. In heaven are the ones who lived in heavenly love and faith in the world; in hell are the ones who lived in hellish love and faith. Further, hell taken as a whole is what is called the Devil and Satan. The hell which is in back, where the people called evil genii live, is called the Devil; and the hell which is in front, where the people called evil spirits live, is called Satan. [3] The nature of each of these hells will be described in subsequent pages. They said that the source of Christendoms acceptance of this kind of faith about people in heaven and hell was in a few passages in the Word understood only in their literal meaning, not enlightened by any real doctrine from the Word. The literal meaning of the Word, however, unless real doctrine illuminates it, leads minds off in different directions, resulting in various kinds of ignorance, in heresies, and in errors. 312. Another reason the churchman has this belief is that he believes no person enters heaven or hell before the time of the Last Judgment. He has conceived this to mean that everything visible will then be destroyed and that new things will emerge, that the soul will return to its body, the person living as a person again because of this coming together. This belief includes the other one about angels4heir being created at the beginningbecause there is no way to believe that heaven and hell are from the human race when it is believed that no one arrives there before the end of the world. [2] In order that people might be convinced that this is not so, I have been allowed to have fellowship with angels and also to talk with people in hell-this for several years now, sometimes constantly from morning to eveningand in this way to become knowledgeable about heaven and about hell. This has been allowed so that the churchman might no longer remain in his mistaken faith about resurrection at the time of judgment, about the interim condition of souls, and then about angels and the devil. This faith, being a faith in something false, is full of shadows; and for people who consider these matters from their own intelligence, it induces
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doubt and ultimately denial. For in their hearts they say, How can such a vast sky, with so many constellations, with the sun and the moon, be destroyed and dispersed? How can the stars then fall from heaven onto the earth, when they are larger than the earth? How can bodies eaten by worms, destroyed by decay, scattered in all directions, be gathered back together to their souls? Where has the soul been all this time, and what has it been like without the power of sensation it possessed in the body? [3] They raise many other similar questions which, being unintelligible, do not fit in with faith, and which for many people destroy faith in the life of the soul after death, in heaven and hell, and likewise in other matters of the churchs faith. www.universe-people.com This destruction can be observed in people who say, Who has come to us from heaven and told us that it is real? Who has told us what hell is, or whether it exists? What is this business about man being tormented by fire to eternity? What is the day of judgment? Has it not been expected for centuries, all in vain?along with many questions that involve a denial of everything. [4] To prevent people who think like this (as is common with many who sound educated and learned because of worldly things, which they enjoy) from further confusing and misleading people of simple faith and heart, from casting hellish shadows on matters of God, heaven, eternal life, and other corollary matters, the more inward reaches of my spirit have been opened by the Lord, and I have in this way been allowed to talk with all the people I was acquainted with during their physical life, after they had died. I have talked with some of them for days, with some for months, with some for a year. I have talked with other people as wellso many that a hundred thousand would be an understatement. Many of these were in the heavens, and many in the hells. I have even talked with some people a couple of days after their death, telling them that now their funeral services and arrangements were being organized for their burial. They responded that it was good to cast off the thing that had served them for a body and for bodily functions in the world. They wanted me to state that they were not dead, that they were alive, just as human as ever, that they had only journeyed from one world to another; also that they were unaware of any loss, since they were in a body and its sensations just as before, involved in understanding and intention just as before, having similar thoughts and affections, similar sensations, and similar desires, to those they had had in the world. [5] Many people just recently deceased, once they saw that they were still alive, still people just as before, even in a similar state (for after death, everyones first state of life is like the one he had in the world, changing gradually for him toward heaven or toward hell)many such people were moved by a fresh joy in being alive, and said they had never believed it. At the same time, they were amazed that they had been in such ignorance, such blindness about the condition of their own life after death. They were even more amazed that church folk were in the same kind of ignorance and blindness, when of all people in all lands of the earth, they could be in light in these matters. Thereafter, they saw for the first time the reason for this blindness and ignorance namely that outward things, the worldly and the physical, so completely occupied and filled peoples minds that they could not be raised into heavens light, nor could church matters beyond the outer forms of doctrine be contemplated. For from worldly and physical concerns, when they are loved as much as they are these days, only shadows flow in when people go deeper. 313. Many of the learned from Christendom are stunned to see themselves after deathin a body, clothed, and housed the way they were in the world. When they recall what they had thought about life after death, spirits, heaven, and hell, they are struck with shame and admit that they had thought nonsense, and that people of simple faith had thought far more wisely than they.
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An investigation was made of some learned people who had reinforced themselves in ideas like these and who gave nature credit for everything. It was discovered that their more inward reaches were quite closed and their more outward reaches opened, so that they were not looking toward heaven but toward the world and therefore toward hell. For to the extent that a persons more inward reaches are opened, he looks toward heaven; but to the extent that his more inward reaches are closed and his more outward ones opened, he looks toward hell. For mans more inward reaches are designed to accept everything that belongs to heaven, and his more outward to accept everything that belongs to the world; and people who accept the world and not heaven with it, accept hell. 314. The conclusion that heaven is from the human race can be drawn from the fact that angels minds and human minds are alike. Both enjoy the faculty of understanding, perceiving, and intending; both are designed to accept heaven. For the human mind is just as discerning as the angelic mind. The reason it is not so discerning in the world is that it is within an earthly body, within which a spiritual mind thinks in natural fashion. But it is quite different when it is released from its tie with the body. Then it no longer thinks in a natural way, but in a spiritual way; and when it does, it thinks about matters unintelligible and inexpressible to the natural personso it discerns like an angel. This allows the conclusion that the inside of man, which is called his spirit, is essentially an angel (see above, n. 57), which, once it is released from its earthly body, is just as much in the human form, and is an angel (on the angels perfect human form, see above, n. 73-77). But when the inside of a person is not opened upwards, only downwards, then after the ultimate release from the body it is in a human form, but in a dreadful and diabolical one. For it cannot look up toward heaven, only down toward hell. 315. A person who has been taught about the Divine design can also understand that man is created to become an angel because the outmost form of the design is within him (n. 304), in which something can be constructed that belongs to heavenly and angelic wisdom, and which can be restored and increased. The Divine design never comes to a halt halfway, and constructs something there without an outmost form, since it is not in its fullness and perfection. It proceeds rather to an outmost form, and once it is in its outmost form, it does construct something, and by the means there gathered, it restores itself and produces something further, which occurs by means of procreations. So this is the locus of the seedbed of heaven. 316. The reason the Lord rose again not only in spirit, but in body as well, is that He glorified His whole human when He was in the worldthat is, He made it Divine. Actually, the soul which He had from the Father was Divine in its own right, and the body was made a representation of that soul (that is, of the Father), and therefore also Divine. As a result, He alone of all people rose again in both respects. This He made clear to the disciples, who believed they were seeing a spirit when they saw Him, by saying, See my hands and My feet, that I am Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.(Luke 24:36-38) showing thereby that He was a person not only in spirit, but even in body. 317. To let it be known that man does live after death, and comes into heaven or hell depending on his life in the world, I have been shown many things about the human state after death. These will be treated below, under the topic of the World of Spirits.

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36. THE HEATHEN OR PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE CHURCH IN HEAVEN 318. It is a general opinion that people who are born outside the church, who are called heathen or gentiles, cannot be saved because they do not possess the Word and therefore have no knowledge of the Lord; and without the Lord there is no salvation. Yet we need only one fact to show that they are savedthe fact that the Lords mercy is universal, that is toward individuals, and that they are born just as human as people within the church, who are relatively few; also that it is not, their fault that they have no knowledge of the Lord. Anyone who thinks with some enlightened rationality can see that no one is born for hell. The Lord is actually Love itself, and His love is a desire to save everyone. So He provides that everyone may have a religion, and through it may have a recognition of something Divine and a more inward life. For living by something religious is living more inwardly. Then the person focuses on the Divine; and to the extent that he does focus on this he does not focus on the world, but moves away from the world. He therefore moves away from a worldly life, which is a more outward life. 319. People can know that the Gentiles are saved just as Christians are if they know what constitutes heaven in man. For heaven is in man, and people who have heaven in themselves come into heaven. Heaven in man is recognizing the Divine and being led by the Divine. The first and foremost element of every religion is recognition of what is Divine:a religion that does not recognize something Divine is not a religion. The laws of every religion focus on worship that is, on how the Divine is to be revered so that the worship may be accepted by Him. And when this occupies a persons mindthat is, to the extent that he wants this or loves thishe is led by the Lord. It is known that Gentiles lead just as moral a life as Christianssome of them better than Christians. A moral life is lived either for the sake of something Divine or for the sake of people in the world. A moral life that is lived for the sake of what is Divine is a spiritual life. The two look alike in outward form; but in inward form they are quite different. For the person who lives a moral life for the sake of what is Divine is led by what is Divine, while the person who lives a moral life for the sake of people in the world is being led by himself. [2] Let an example shed light on this. The person who does not wrong his neighbor because it is against religion, therefore against what is Divine, refrains from wrongdoing from a spiritual source. But the person who does not wrong his neighbor simply out of fear of the law, or of loss of reputation or prestige or profittherefore for the sake of himself and the worldrefrains from wrongdoing from a natural source, and is being led by himself. The life of the latter is natural, while the life of the former is spiritual. The person whose moral life is spiritual has heaven within him, but the person whose moral life is not spiritual does not have heaven within him. The reason is that heaven flows in from a higher level and opens a persons more inward reaches, flowing through the more inward into the more outward. But the world flows in from a lower level and opens the more outward but not the more inward. For inflow does not occur from the natural world into the spiritual, but from the spiritual into the natural. This is why, if heaven is not accepted at the same time as the world the more inward reaches are closed. This enables us to see just which people do accept heaven in themselves and which people do not. [3] But the heaven in one person is not the same as the heaven in someone else. It varies in each individual depending on his affection for the good and for what is true that derives from it. People who are engaged in an affection for what is good because of what is Divine, love the
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Divine-True, for the good and the true love each other and want to be joined together. Gentiles, consequently, although they are not involved in things genuinely true in the world, do ultimately accept them in the other life because of their love. 320. There was a particular spirit from the Gentiles who in the world had lived in charity according to his religious persuasion. When he heard some Christians discussing matters of belief (spirits discuss much more thoroughly and keenly than men, especially the topic of things good and true), being surprised that they argued so much, he said that he did not want to hear these discussions because they were being carried on on the basis of appearances and fallacies. If I am good, he informed them, I can know which things are true from what is good itself; and what I do not know I can acquire. 321. I have been taught in many ways about Gentiles who have led a moral life, living in obedience and good order and mutual charity according to their religious persuasion and who have thereby acquired some element of conscience. I have learned that they have been accepted in the other life and are taught there with painstaking care by angels about the good and true elements of faith. I have been told that when they are taught, they behave temperately, understandingly, and wisely, readily both accepting truths and absorbing them. For they have not fashioned principles of falsity for themselves in opposition to the true elements of faith, principles which would have to be broken down (to say nothing about libels against the Lord) as have many Christians who do not favor any idea of Him except as an ordinary man. It is different with Gentiles, who, on hearing that God became Man and thereby made Himself known in the world, promply recognize and worship the Lord. They say that God made Himself expressly known because He is the God of heaven and earth and because the human race belongs to Him. It is a matter of Divine Truth that there is no salvation apart from the Lord, but this has to be understood as meaning that there is no salvation except from the Lord. There are many planets in the universe, all full of inhabitants. Hardly any of them know that the Lord donned a human nature on our planet. Still, because they do worship the Divine in human form, they are received and led by the Lord; on this topic, one may refer to the booklet, Earths in the Universe. 322. There are both wise and simple people among the Gentiles, just as there are among Christians. To help me learn what they are like, I have been allowed to talk with them, sometimes for hours o~ days. But nowadays there are not the wise ones there were in olden times, especially in the Ancient Church, which was distributed over much of the Asian continent, and from which religion spread to many heathen. To let me know what they were like, I have been allowed to hold friendly conversation with some of them. A particular person was with me who had once been one of the wiser ones and had consequently been well known in the learned world. I talked with him on various topics, and was given to believe that it was Cicero. Since I knew that he was wise, my conversation with him was about wisdom, understanding, order, the Word, and lastly the Lord. [2] On wisdom, he said that no other wisdom exists than that which belongs to life, and that wisdom could not be predicated of anything else. On understanding, he said that wisdom was its source. On order, he said that it comes from the highest God, and that living by that order is being wise and understanding. In connection with the Word, when I read him a passage from the prophets he was overjoyed, mainly because the individual names and words pointed to more inward matters. He was quite astonished that educated people nowadays do not find pleasure in this kind of pursuit. I saw clearly that the more inward reaches of his mind were opened. He said that he could not
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stay there, because he perceived something holier than he could bear, and was being deeply moved as a result. [3] Eventually, my conversation with him was about the Lord, His birth as a Man, yet begotten by God, His putting off the maternal human and putting on the Divine Human, and His being the one who rules the universe. His response was that he knew many things about the Lord, and in his own way could grasp that it could not have happened in any other way if the human race were to be saved. Meanwhile, some evil Christians were spouting various libels. But he paid no attention to them, saying that this came .as no surprise, since in their physical lives they had not absorbed the kind of thing they should have, and that until this kind of libel is broken down, they are unable to let in ideas that affirm, the way people can who lack knowledge. 323. I have also been allowed to talk with other people who had died in olden times and who had been among the wiser ones then. I first saw them in front of me at a distance, and they were able there to grasp the more inward elements of my thought very completely. From a single thought-concept they could know a whole series, and fill it with delightful elements of wisdom with charming representations. This led to my perceiving that they were among the wiser ones; and I was told that they were from olden times. Thereupon they came nearer, and when I read them a passage from the Word, they were thoroughly delighted. I perceived their actual delight and pleasure, which arose mainly from the fact that each and every thing they heard from the Word was representative and indicative of things celestial and spiritual. They stated that in their own times, when they lived in the world, their manner of thinking and speakingof writing as wellwas of the same kind, and that this was their pursuit of wisdom. 324. As far as the Gentiles who are living noawdays are concerned, however, they are not wise, but many are simple-hearted. Eventually, though, the ones who have lived in mutual charity do accept wisdom in the other life. I may cite an example or two of these. While I was reading the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of Judges (about Micha, whose idol and teraphim and Levite the Danites stole), there was a spirit from the heathen who during his physical life had been an idol-worshipper. When he listened attentively to what happened to Micah, the pain he suffered because of his idol which the Danites stole, the pain came upon him, and affected him so severely that he scarcely knew what he was thinking on account of it. This pain was perceived, as was an innocence in the details of his affections at the same time. Some Christian spirits were nearby, noticed him, and were amazed that this idol-worshipper was moved by such an affection of mercy and innocence. Thereafter, good spirits talked with him, saying that the idol was not to be worshipped, and that he could understand this because he was a human being. Rather, he should think beyond the idol, about God the Creator and Guide of all heaven and all the earth, and that this God was the Lord. While they were saying this, I was allowed to perceive the more inward condition of his worship, which was conveyed to me as far holier than that of the Christians. We may conclude from this that Gentiles enter heaven more readily than Christians noawadays, in keeping with the Lords words in Luke: Then they will come from the East and from the West, and from the North and the South, and will take their places in the kingdom of God: and lo, there are last ones who will be first, and there are first ones who will be last. (Luke l3:29t) For in the condition in which that Gentile was, he could absorb all the elements of faith and accept them with an inner affection. There was a mercy in him that was a quality of love, and
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within his ignorance there was innocence. When these are present, all the elements of faith are accepted freely, and even with joy. Thereafter he was received among the angels. 325. I heard a single chorus at a distance one morning; from representations of the chorus I was granted a recognition that they were Chinese. They were bringing a kind of woolly goat, then a cake made of millet, and an ivory spoon, and a kind of conceptualization of a floating city. They, wanted to come closer to me, and when they were at hand, they said they wanted to be alone with me so that they could bring what they were thinking out into the open. But they were told that they were not alone, and that there were others who felt insulted at their wish to be alone, since they were guests. Once they perceived this resentment, they sank into thought as to whether they had been false to the neighbor and whether anyone had claimed for himself what belongs to others. Since all thoughts in the other life are communicated, I was allowed to perceive this agitation of their minds. It had to do with the realization that they had accidentally wounded others. Then there was an element of shame as a result, and elements at the same time of other honest affections; from which one could recognize that they were gifted with charity. Shortly thereafter I talked with them, eventually about the Lord. When I called Him the Christ, there was a particular perceptible distaste among them. But the reason was disclosed, namely that they had brought this distaste with them from the world because they knew that Christians lived worse lives than they did, lives without charity. But when I called Him the Lord, they were deeply moved. They were then taught by angels that Christian doctrine above all others in the whole world enjoins love and charity, but that there are few people who live by it. There are Gentiles who have realized from conversation and report while they lived in the world, that Christians lived evil lives-in adultery, for example, in hatred, in strife, in drunkennessin a kind of behavior that horrified them, because this kind of behavior is opposed to their religious principles. In the other life, these people are relatively hesitant about accepting true elements of faith. But they are taught by angels that Christian doctrine, even the faith itself, teaches something quite different. Christians, though, live by their doctrinal precepts less than Gentiles do. When they grasp this, they accept true elements of faith and worship the Lord, albeit gradually. 326. It is customary for Gentiles who have worshipped some god in an image or statue, or some idol, to be introduced when they enter the other life to people who stand in lieu of their gods or idols, so that they may shed their illusions. After they have been with them for a few days, they are brought away. People who have worshipped men are introduced sometimes to the people themselves, sometimes to others who stand in their stead. Many of the Jews, then, are introduced to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, or David. But when they see that these have the same human nature as others and that they can be of no assistance to them, they are ashamed, and are taken to their places in keeping with their lives. Among the Gentiles in heaven, the most beloved are the Africans. They accept the good and true elements of heaven more readily than others. They want first of all to be known as obedient, but not as faithful. They say that Christians, since they possess a doctrine of faith, can be called faithful; but not they themselves unless they accept itor, in their own words, are able to accept it. 327. I have talked with some people who were in the Ancient Church (by the Ancient Church, we mean the one after the Flood, spread over many realms, namely through Assyria, Mesopotamia, Syria, Ethiopia, Libya, Egypt, Philistia as far as Tyre and Sidon, and through the
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land of Canaan on both sides of the Jordan), people who at that time had known about the Lord, had known that He was going to come, had absorbed the good elements of faith, but eventually had deviated and become idolaters. They were toward the front on the left, in a place full of shadows, and in wretched condition. Their speech was rather fluty, in monotone, and almost devoid of rational thought. They said they had been there for many centuries, and that they were released occasionally so that they could serve others in different functions, which were menial. This led to thought about many Christians who are not outwardly idolaters, but are inwardly, being worshippers of themselves and the world and denying the Lord at heartwhat lot awaits them in the other life. 328. It may be seen above (n. 308) that the Lords church is distributed over the whole world it is universalthat it includes all people who live in the good of charity in accord with their own religious persuasion; that the church where the Word is known and the Lord is known through it, is to those outside that church like the heart and lungs in a person, from which all the members of the body livedifferently in keeping with their forms, locations, and connections.

37. CHILDREN IN HEAVEN

329. Some people hold the belief that only children born, within the church enter heaven, not children born outside the church. The reason they give is that children within the church have been baptized, and by means of baptism have been introduced into the faith of the church. These people, however, do not know that no one gains heaven or faith by means of baptism. Baptism simply serves as a sign and reminder that the person needs to be reborn, and that the person born within the church can be reborn because the Word is there, in which are Divine truths for regeneration. The Lord also is known there and He is the source of regeneration. May they know, then, that every child, wherever he was bornwithin the church or outside it, of godly or of godless parents every child is accepted by the Lord when he dies and is brought up in heaven. According to the Divine design, he is taught and filled with affections for what is good. By means of these, he is filled with insights into what is true. Then, as he is made complete in understanding and wisdom, he is introduced into heaven and becomes an angel. Everyone who thinks rationally is capable of understanding that no one is born for hell, but everyone for heaven; and that the individual himself is at fault for entering hell, with children being incapable of guilt as yet. 330. Children who die are just as much children in the other life. They possess the same childlike mind, the same innocence within their ignorance, the same gentleness in all respects. They are only in beginnings in order to become angels. For children are not angels, but do become angels. Actually, everyone who departs this world finds himself in a similar life statethe child in a childs state, the adolescent in an adolescents state, the young adult, the adult, the aged, in the state of a young adult, an adult, or an elderly personalthough later each individuals state does change. The state of children has an advantage over that of others in this respect, that children are in innocence, and evil is not yet rooted in them by their real life. Their innocence is of such nature that all the elements of heaven can be grafted into it, for innocence is a container for the true that belongs to faith and the good that belongs to love.
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331. The state of children in the other life is much better than that of children in this world, since they are not clothed with an earthly body, but with one like an angels. An earthly body is intrinsically heavy. It does not accept basic sensations and basic impulses from the more inward or spiritual world, but from the more outward or natural world. So children in this world learn to walk, to control their movements, and to talk. Even their senses, such as sight and hearing, are opened only by practice. It is different with children in the other life. Because they are spirits, they act immediately in accord with what is within them, walking without practice. They even talkat first, to be sure, from general affections that are not resolved into thought-concepts. But before long, they are introduced into these as well, which can happen because their more outward aspects are at one with their more inward ones. On the flow of angels speech from affections differentiated by means of thought-concepts, with the result that their speech is wholly shaped by thoughts from affections, (see above nn. 234-245). 332. As soon as children are revived (which happens immediately after their decease), they are borne into heaven and entrusted to angels of the feminine gender who during their physical life had loved children tenderly and had also loved God. Because they had in the world loved all children with a virtually maternal tenderness, they accept these as their own. And the children, from their inborn nature, love them as though they were their own mothers. Each woman has as many children as she wants from her spiritual parental affection. This heaven appears in front of the area of the forehead, right on the line or ray along which angels look toward the Lord. It has this location because all children are under the direct care of the Lord. Also the heaven of innocence, which is the third heaven, flows in among them. 333. Children vary in their native qualities. Some have the nature of spiritual angels, some the nature of celestial angels. Children of celestial nature appear toward the right in heaven; children of spiritual nature appear toward the left. In the Grand Man who is heaven, all children are in the region of the eyes. Those of a spiritual nature are in the region of the left eye, and those of a celestial nature are in the region of the right eye. This is because the Lord appears in front of the left eye to angels in the spiritual kingdom, and in front of the right eye to angels in the celestial kingdom (see above, n. 118). Since children are in the region of the eyes in the Grand Man or heaven, we can see that they are under the Lords direct observation and care. 334. Let us describe briefly how children are raised in heaven. From their guardian, they learn to talk. Their first speech is simply an affectional sound that gradually becomes clearer as thought-concepts become involved. For thoughtconcepts stemming from affections are the basis of all angelic speech (material on this subject may be found in the appropriate chapter, nn. 234245). First of all, there are subtly instilled into their affections (which all spring from innocence) the kinds of thing that are presented to their sight, quite delightful things. Because they are from a spiritual source, elements of heaven flow in simultaneously within them, and the infants more inward levels are opened by this means. So day by day they become more perfect. Once this first stage is completed, they are transferred to another heaven where they are educated by teachers; and so the process continues. 335. Children are taught mainly by means of representations suited to their native gifts representations so beautiful, and so filled from within with wisdom at the same time, that no one
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could ever believe it. In this way, step by step, an understanding is instilled into them which draws its soul from what is good. At this point I may describe a pair of representations I have been privileged to see, which may be taken as typical of other representations. At the outset, they were portraying the Lord rising from His tomb, and at the same time the union of His Human with His Divine. This happened in such a wise way that it surpassed all human wisdom, yet at the same time it was in the innocent style of infants. They represented a concept of a tomb, but not a concept of the Lord with it except so indirectly that one could scarcely tell that it was the Lord, as though He were a great way off. This is because there is something funereal about the tomb which they were dispelling by this means. After this, they carefully let into the tomb something airy that looked thin and water-like, by which they indicated (albeit with a suitable indirectness) the spiritual life inherent in baptism. After this, I saw their depiction of the Lords descent to those who were bound and His ascent with them to heaven, all done with matchless care and reverence. The childlike aspect was that they let down little cords, not at all obvious, very delicate and slight, with which they supported the Lord in His ascent. Ever present was a holy fear lest any element in the portrayal border on anything that did not contain something spiritual and heavenly. There are other portrayals in which they are engaged, by which they are guided to recognitions of what is true and affections for what is good, for example plays adapted to the minds of children. 336. I was also shown how delicate their understanding is. While I was praying the Lords Prayer, and they were flowing into my thought-concepts from their own understanding, I sensed that their inflow was so delicate and mild that it was composed almost entirely of affection. At the same time, though, one could notice that their understanding had been opened by the Lord, for what came from them seemed to be flowing through them. The Lord flows into childrens concepts above all from their inmost realms, for nothing has closed these, as is the case with adults no principles of falsity against understanding what is true, no life of evil against accepting what is good and thus becoming wise. This leads to the conclusion that children do not enter the angelic state immediately after death, but are led into it step by step by means of insights into what is good and true, all in keeping with the whole heavenly design. For the slightest elements of the inner nature of every one of them are known to the Lord. So they are led in accord with each and every shift in their own tendency, toward acceptance of things true derived from what is good, and of things good derived from what is true. 337. I have also been shown how everything is instilled into them by means of pleasant and charming things suited to their gifts. I have been allowed to see children most beautifully clothed with garlands of flowers glowing in the loveliest heavenly hues around their breasts and their slender arms. Once I was allowed to see some children and their nurses, with some virgins in a garden parknot a wooded park, but one with banks of laurel with most elegant gateways and paths giving access to its inner areas. The children themselves were garlanded with the same flowers, and as they entered, the shrubbery over the entrance became more joyfully radiant. We can thus ascertain the quality of their delights, and can also ascertain that they are led into the good elements of innocence and charity by means of charming and pleasant things, with these good elements constantly instilled into the pleasant and charming means by the Lord. 338. I have been shown, by a means of communication common in the other life, what
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childrens concepts are like when they see any particular object. It was as though each and every thing was alive, so that life is inherent in the individual concepts of their thought. I could also see that children on earth have virtually the same concepts when they are involved in their play, not yet having the kind of considered opinion adults do about what is inanimate. 339. It was stated above that angels are either of a celestial or of a spiritual bent. The ones of a celestial bent are clearly distinguished from the ones of a spiritual bent. The former think and speak a little more gently, so that almost nothing is noticeable except a fluent something stemming from a love of what is good, for the Lord, and toward the neighbor. The latter do not function so gently; instead, something rather like fluttering wings is noticeable in certain situations among them. This is evident from their indignation, among other things. 340. Many people manage to suppose that children remain children in heaven and are like children compared to angels. People who do not know what an angel is have managed to confirm themselves in this opinion by the likenesses in churches here and there where angels are portrayed as children; but the actual situation is quite different. Understanding and wisdom constitute an angel. Just as long as children do not possess these attributes, they are with angels but are not themselves angels. But once they become understanding and wise, they become angels. Furtherwhich surprised methey do not then look like children, but like adults. For at that point they are no longer of a childlike nature, but of a more mature, angelic nature. This is inherent in understanding and wisdom. The reason that children look more mature as they become more perfect in understanding and wisdom is that understanding and wisdom are spiritual nourishment itself. So the very things that nourish their minds are nourishing their bodies as well. This stems from correspondence, for the form of their bodies is nothing but the outward form of their more inward elements. It is worth knowing that children in heaven do not mature beyond the beginning of young adulthood, and remain at that point to eternity. To let me be quite sure that this is the case, I have been allowed to talk with some people who were reared as children in heaven and grew up there. I have talked with some when they were children, and then with the same people when they were young adults. I have heard from them about the course of their lives from the one age to the other. 341. On the basis of statements made above (nn. 276-283) about the innocence of angels in heaven, we may establish that innocence is what accepts all the elements of heaven, and that the innocence of children is therefore the matrix of all affections for what is good and true. The statements we refer to are the following: that innocence is wanting to be led by the Lord and not by oneself, that a person is involved in innocence to the extent that he is moved out of his own selfhood, and that the measure of his freedom from his selfhood is the measure of his involvement in the Lords Selfhood. The Lords Selfhood is what is known as the Lords righteousness and worth. The innocence of children, however, is not real innocence because thus far it lacks wisdom. Real innocence is wisdom; for to the extent that a person is wise he loves to be led by the Lordwhich is the same as saying that a person is wise to the extent that he is led by the Lord. [2] So infants are led from the outward innocence in which they are first involved (which is known as the innocence of infancy) into inward innocence, which is the innocence of wisdom. This latter innocence is the goal of all their instruction and advancement. So when they attain the innocence of wisdom, the innocence of childhood which had served them as a matrix in the interim is bonded to them. [3] The nature of childrens innocence was depicted to me as something wood-like, almost devoid of life, which is brought to life as they are perfected through the agency of insights into
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what is true and affections for what is good. Afterwards, the nature of real innocence was depicted by a very beautiful child, very much alive, and naked. Actually, the innocents who are in the inmost heaven and therefore nearest the Lord, look quite like children in the sight of other angels. And some are naked, since innocence is portrayed by a nakedness which does not occasion shame. This is what we read about the first man and his wife in the Garden (Genesis 2:25); this is also why, when their state of innocence came to an end, they were ashamed of their nakedness and hid (Genesis 3:7, 10, 11). In summary, the wiser angels are, the more innocent they are; and the more innocent they are, the more they look like children to themselves. This is why infancy in the Word indicates innocence (see above, n. 278). 342. I have talked with angels about children-whether they were free of evils because they did not have any realized evil like adults. But I was told that they are just as much involved in what is evil, that they too are actually nothing but evil. But like all angels, they are withheld from what is evil and held in what is good by the Lord, so completely that it seems to them that they in their own right are involved in what is good. For this reason, after they become mature in heaven, to prevent them from involvement in the false notion that the good they have is from themselves and not from the Lord, they are occasionally allowed to slip back into their inherited evil elements, and are left in them until they know and realize and believe that this is in fact the case. One particular person who had died as an infant and grown up in heaven held this kind of opinion. [2] He was the son of a certain king. So he was allowed to slip back into his inborn life of evil things; and I saw then from his life-sphere that he had a passion for dominating others and took acts of adultery lightly. For him, these were evils acquired by heredity from his parents. But once he recognized that this was his own quality, he was again accepted among the angels he had been with before. [3] In the other life, a person never suffers punishment because of inherited evil, because it does not belong to him. That is, he is not at fault for being what he is in this respect. Rather, he suffers punishment because of the realized evil that does belong to himthat is, the amount of inherited evil that he has made his own by his life activities. www.universe-people.com This remission of grown-up children into the state of their hereditary evil is not to make them suffer punishment, but to let them know that in their own right they are nothing but evil, and that they are delivered from the hell within them into heaven because of the Lords mercy. So they know that they are not in heaven because of their own worth, but because of the Lord. This prevents them from showing off in front of others because of the good within them, for this is in opposition to the good of mutual love, just as it is in opposition to the true content of faith. 343. Several times, when numbers of children were with me in groups at the same time (these were still wholly in a childlike state), they sounded like something soft and disorganized, as though they were not yet coordinated as they would be when more mature. Surprisingly, some spirits who were with me could not refrain from urging them to speak (this kind of desire was innate in the spirits). But every time, I noticed that the children balked and did not want to talk. The refusal and resistanceaccompanied by a kind of resentmentare things I have often perceived. When they were given the ability to talk, they kept saying only that it wasnt so. I was taught that this is what childrens temptation is like, to accustom and introduce them not only to resisting what is false and evil, but also to not thinking, speaking, or acting solely at the prompting of someone else. This has the ultimate goal of their not letting themselves be led by anyone but the Lord alone. 344. From the matters just cited we can draw conclusions as to the nature of the upbringing of
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children in heaven. Specifically, it is a matter of their introduction, by means of understanding what is true and wisdom in what is good, into angelic life, which is love to the Lord and mutual love, both containing innocence. How different this is from the upbringing of children on earth in many cases can be deduced from the following example. I was in the street of a large city and saw some small boys involved in a fight. People crowded around, looking on with great pleasure, and I was told that the parents themselves urged their children into these fights. The good spirits and angels who were seeing these events through my eyes were so repelled that I could feel their horror particularly at the fact that parents were egging their children into such situations. They said that parents in this way snuff out at this early age all mutual love that infants have from the Lord, and lead them into attitudes of hatred and vengefulness. As a result, by their deliberate behavior they shut their children out of heaven, where there is nothing but mutual love. Let any parents who wish their children well, then, beware of this kind of behavior. 345. Let us now state the nature of the difference between people who die as adults and people who die as children. People who die as adults have a plane acquired from the earthly, material world, and take it with them. This plane is their memory and its natural, physical affection. This remains settled and then quiesces, but all the while it is serving as an outmost plane for their thought after death, since their thought flows into it. As a result, the nature of this plane and the way the rational corresponds with its contents determine the nature of the person himself after death. In contrast, children who died in childhood and were brought up in heaven do not have this kind of plane. Instead, they have a natural-spiritual plane. This is because they draw nothing from the physical world and the earthly body. Consequently, they are incapable of involvement in such crude affections and their resultant thoughts; in fact they draw everything from heaven. Particularly, children do not know that they were born in the world, so they believe they were born in heaven. This means that they do not know what a birth other than a spiritual one isa spiritual birth being one that occurs by means of insights into things good and true, and by the intelligence and wisdom that make a person a person. Since these things come from the Lord, they believe that they belong to the Lord Himself, and love this fact. Still, the state of people who have matured on earth can become just as perfect as that of children who grow up in heaven, if they set aside bodily and wordly loves (which are loves of self and the world) and accept spiritual loves in their place.

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