Heaven and its Wonders and HellSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Heaven and its Wonders and Hell
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Future life -- Christianity -- Early work to 1800; Heaven -- Christianity; Hell -- Christianity
332. As soon as little children are resuscitated, which takes place
immediately after death, they are taken into heaven and confided to
angel women who in the life of the body tenderly loved little
children and at the same time loved God. Because these during their
life in the world loved all children with a kind of motherly
tenderness, they receive them as their own; while the children, from
an implanted instinct, love them as their own mothers. There are as
many children in each one's care as she desires from a spiritual
parental affection. This heaven appears in front before the forehead,
directly in the line or radius in which the angels look to the Lord.
It is so situated because all little children are under the immediate
auspices of the Lord; and the heaven of innocence, which is the third
heaven, flows into them.
333. Little children have various dispositions, some that of the
spiritual angels and some that of the celestial angels. Those who are
of a celestial disposition are seen in that heaven to the right, and
those of a spiritual disposition to the left. All children in the
Greatest Man, which is heaven, are in the province of the eyes-those
of a spiritual disposition in the province of the left eye, and those
of a celestial disposition in the province of the right eye. This is
because the angels who are in the spiritual kingdom see the Lord
before the left eye, and those who are in the celestial kingdom
before the right eye (see above, n. 118). This fact that in the
Greatest Man or heaven children are in the province of the eyes is a
proof that they are under the immediate sight and auspices of the
Lord.
334. How children are taught in heaven shall also be briefly told.
From their nurses they learn to talk. Their earliest speech is simply
a sound of affection; this by degrees becomes more distinct as ideas
of thought enter; for ideas of thought from affections constitute all
angelic speech (as may be seen in its own chapter, n. 234-245). Into
their affections, all of which proceed from innocence, such things as
appear before their eyes and cause delight are first instilled; and
as these things are from a spiritual origin the things of heaven at
once flow into them, and by means of these heavenly things their
interiors are opened, and they are thereby daily perfected. But when
this first age is completed they are transferred to another heaven,
where they are taught by masters; and so on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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