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
460. In conclusion I will mention a certain arcanum hitherto unknown
to any one, namely, that every good and truth that goes forth from
the Lord and makes heaven is in the human form; and this not only as
a whole and in what is greatest, but also in every part and what is
least; also that this form affects everyone who receives good and
truth from the Lord, and causes everyone who is in heaven to be in
the human form in accordance with his reception of good and truth. It
is in consequence of this that heaven is like itself in general and
in particular, and that the human form is the form of the whole, of
every society, and of every angel (as has been shown in the four
chapters from n. 59 to 86); to which let it be added that it is the
form of the least things of thought derived from heavenly love with
the angels. No man, however, can easily comprehend this arcanum; but
it is clearly comprehended by the angels, because they are in the
light of heaven.
461. XLVIII. AFTER DEATH MAN IS POSSESSED OF EVERY SENSE, AND OF ALL
THE MEMORY, THOUGHT, AND AFFECTION, THAT HE HAD IN THE WORLD, LEAVING
NOTHING BEHIND EXCEPT HIS EARTHLY BODY.
It has been proved to me by manifold experience that when man passes
from the natural world into the spiritual, as he does when he dies,
he carries with him all his possessions, that is, everything that
belongs to him as a man, except his earthly body. For when man enters
the spiritual world or the life after death, he is in a body as he
was in the world, with no apparent difference, since he neither sees
nor feels any difference. But his body is then spiritual, and thus
separated or purified from all that is earthly; and when what is
spiritual touches or sees what is spiritual, it is just the same as
when what is natural touches or sees what is natural. So when a man
has become a spirit he does not know otherwise than that he is in the
same body that he had in the world and thus does not know that he has
died. [2] Moreover, a man's spirit enjoys every sense, both outer and
inner, that he enjoyed in the world; he sees as before, he hears and
speaks as before, smells and tastes, and when touched, he feels the
touch as before; he also longs, desires, craves, thinks, reflects, is
stirred, loves, wills, as before; and one who takes delight in
studies, reads and writes as before. In a word, when a man passes
from one life into the other, or from one world into the other, it is
like passing from one place into another, carrying with him all
things that he had possessed in himself as a man; so that by death,
which is only the death of the earthly body, man cannot be said to
have lost anything really his own. [3] Furthermore, he carries with
him his natural memory, retaining everything that he has heard, seen,
read, learned, or thought, in the world from earliest infancy even to
the end of life; although the natural objects that are contained in
the memory, since they cannot be reproduced in the spiritual world,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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