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
418. Again, the immensity of the heaven of the Lord is shown in this,
that heaven in its entire complex reflects a single Man, and
corresponds to all things and each thing in man, and that this
correspondence can never be filled out, since it is a correspondence
not only with each of the members, organs, and viscera of the body in
general, but also with all and each of the little viscera and little
organs contained in these in every minutest particular, and even with
each vessel and fiber; and not only with these but also with the
organic substances that receive interiorly the influx of heaven, from
which come man's interior activities that are serviceable to the
operations of his mind; since everything that exists interiorly in
man exists in forms which are substances, for anything that does not
exist in a substance as its subject is nothing. There is a
correspondence of all these things with heaven, as can be seen from
the chapter treating of the correspondence of all things of heaven
with all things of man (n. 87-102). This correspondence can never be
filled out because the more numerous the angelic affiliations are
that correspond to each member the more perfect heaven becomes; for
every perfection in the heavens increases with increase of number;
and this for the reason that all there have the same end, and look
with one accord to that end. That end is the common good; and when
that reigns there is, from the common good, good to each individual,
and from the good of each individual there is good to the whole
community. This is so for the reason that the Lord turns all in
heaven to Himself (see above, n. 123), and thereby makes them to be
one in Himself. That the unanimity and concord of many, especially
from such an origin and held together by such a bond, produces
perfection, everyone with a reason at all enlightened can see
clearly.
419. I have also been permitted to see the extent of the inhabited
and also of the uninhabited heaven; and the extent of the uninhabited
heaven was seen to be so great that it could not be filled to
eternity even if there were many myriads of earths, and as great a
multitude of men on each earth as on ours. (On this also see the
treatise on The Earths in the Universe, n. 168.)
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