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
thought apart from willing is impossible. All this makes clear what
is meant by the state of man's exteriors and the state of his
interiors.
500. When will and thought are mentioned will includes affection and
love, and all the delight and pleasure that spring from affection and
love, since all these relate to the will as to their subject; for
what a man wills he loves and feels to be delightful or pleasurable;
and on the other hand, what a man loves and feels to be delightful or
pleasurable, that he wills. But by thought is then meant everything
by which affection or love is confirmed, for thought is simply the
will's form, or that whereby what is willed may appear in light. This
form is made apparent through various rational analyses, which have
their origin in the spiritual world and belong properly to the spirit
of man.
501. Let it be understood that man is wholly such as his interiors
are, and not such as his exteriors are separate from his interiors.
This is because his interiors belong to his spirit, and the life of
his spirit is the life of man, for from it his body lives; and
because of this such as a man's interiors are such he continues to be
to eternity. But as the exteriors pertain to the body they are
separated after death, and those of them that adhere to the spirit
are laid asleep, and serve purely as a plane for the interiors, as
has been shown above in treating of the memory of man which continues
after death. This makes evident what is man's own and what is not his
own, namely, that with the evil man nothing that belongs to his
exterior thought from which he speaks, or to the exterior will from
which he acts, is his own, but only that which belongs to his
interior thought and will.
502. When the first state, which is the state of the exteriors
treated of in the preceding chapter, has been passed through, the
man-spirit is let into the state of his interiors, or into the state
of his interior will and its thought, in which he had been in the
world when left to himself to think freely and without restraint.
Into this state he unconsciously glides, just as when in the world he
withdraws the thought nearest to his speech, that is, from which he
speaks, towards his interior thought and abides in the latter.
Therefore in this state of his interiors the man-spirit is in
himself and in his very life; for to think freely from his own
affection is the very life of man, and is himself.
503. In this state the spirit thinks from his very will, thus from
his very affection, or from his very love; and thought and will then
make one, and one in such a manner that he seems scarcely to think
but only to will. It is nearly the same when he speaks, yet with the
difference that he speaks with a kind of fear that the thoughts of
the will may go forth naked, since by his social life in the world
this has come to be a part of his will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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