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
Evidently, then, those that have loved
themselves and the world more than use have no lot in heaven; for his
love or affection remains with everyone after his life in the world,
and is not extirpated to eternity (see above, n. 563).
394. In heaven everyone comes into his own occupation in accordance
with correspondence, and the correspondence is not with the
occupation but with the use of each occupation (see above, n. 112);
for there is a correspondence of all things (see n. 106). He that in
heaven comes into the employment or occupation corresponding to his
use is in much the same condition of life as when he was in the
world; since what is spiritual and what is natural make one by
correspondences; yet there is this difference, that he then comes
into an interior delight, because into spiritual life, which is an
interior life, and therefore more receptive of heavenly blessedness.
395. XLII. HEAVENLY JOY AND HAPPINESS.
Hardly any one at present knows what heaven is or what heavenly joy
is. Those who have given any thought to these subjects have had so
general and so gross an idea about them as scarcely to amount to
anything. From spirits that have come from the world into the other
life I have been able to learn fully what idea they had of heaven and
heavenly joy; for when left to themselves, as they were in the world,
they think as they then did. There is this ignorance about heavenly
joy for the reason that those who have thought about it have formed
their opinion from the outward joys pertaining to the natural man,
and have not known what the inner and spiritual man is, nor in
consequence the nature of his delight and blessedness; and therefore
even if they had been told by those who are in spiritual or inward
delight what heavenly joy is, would have had no comprehension of it,
for it could have fallen only into an idea not yet recognized, thus
into no perception; and would therefore have been among the things
that the natural man rejects. Yet everyone can understand that when a
man leaves his outer or natural man he comes into the inner or
spiritual man, and consequently can see that heavenly delight is
internal and spiritual, not external and natural; and being internal
and spiritual, it is more pure and exquisite, and affects the
interiors of man which pertain to his soul or spirit. From these
things alone everyone may conclude that his delight is such as the
delight of his spirit has previously been and that the delight of the
body, which is called the delight of the flesh, is in comparison not
heavenly; also that whatever is in the spirit of man when he leaves
the body remains after death, since he then lives a man-spirit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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