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
434. Unless man were a subject which is a substance that can serve a
source and containant he would be unable to think and will. Any thing
that is supposed to exist apart from a substantial subject is
nothing. This can be seen from the fact that a man is unable to see
without an organ which is the subject of his sight, or to hear
without an organ which is the subject of his hearing. Apart from
these organs, sight and hearing are nothing and have no existence.
The same is true of thought, which is inner sight, and of perception,
which is inner hearing; unless these were in substances and from
substances which are organic forms and subjects, they would have no
existence at all. All this shows that man's spirit as well as his
body is in a form, and that it is in a human form, and enjoys
sensories and senses when separated from the body the same as when it
was in it, and that all the life of the eye and all the life of the
ear, in a word, all the life of sense that man has, belongs not to
his body but to his spirit, which dwells in these organs and in their
minutest particulars. This is why spirits see, hear, and feel, as
well as men. But when the spirit has been loosed from the body, these
senses are exercised in the spiritual world, not in the natural
world. The natural sensation that the spirit had when it was in the
body it had by means of the material part that was added to it; but
it then had also spiritual sensations in its thinking and willing.
435. All this has been said to convince the rational man that viewed
in himself man is a spirit, and that the corporeal part that is added
to the spirit to enable it to perform its functions in the natural
and material world is not the man, but only an instrument of his
spirit. But evidences from experience are preferable, because there
are many that fail to comprehend rational deductions; and those that
have established themselves in the opposite view turn such deductions
into grounds of doubt by means of reasonings from the fallacies of
the senses. Those that have established themselves in the opposite
view are accustomed to think that beasts likewise have life and
sensations and thus have a spiritual part, the same as man has, and
yet that part dies with the body. But the spiritual of beasts is not
the same as the spiritual of man is; for man has what beasts have
not, an inmost, into which the Divine flows, raising man up to
Itself, and thereby conjoining man to Itself. Because of this, man,
in contrast with beasts, has the ability to think about God and about
the Divine things of heaven and the church, and to love God from
these and in these, and thus be conjoined to Him; and whatever can be
conjoined to the Divine cannot be dissipated, but whatever cannot be
conjoined is dissipated. The inmost that man has, in contrast with
beasts, has been treated of above (n. 39), and what was there said
will here be repeated, since it is important to have the fallacies
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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