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
from the world but from heaven, and that one can be prepared for
heaven only by means of instruction. [4] Moreover, so far as the Lord
flows into the life of any one He instructs him, for so far He
kindles the will with the love of knowing truths and enlightens the
thought to know them; and so far as this is done the interiors of man
are opened and heaven is implanted in them; and furthermore, what is
Divine and heavenly flows into the honest things pertaining to moral
life and into the just things pertaining to civil life in man, and
makes them spiritual, since man then does these things from the
Divine, which is doing them for the sake of the Divine. For the
things honest and just pertaining to moral and civil life which a man
does from that source are the essential effects of spiritual life;
and the effect derives its all from the effecting cause, since such
as the cause is such is the effect.
513. Instruction is given by the angels of many societies, especially
those in the northern and southern quarters, because those angelic
societies are in intelligence and wisdom from a knowledge of good and
truth. The places of instruction are towards the north and are
various, arranged and distinguished according to the kinds and
varieties of heavenly goods, that all and each may be instructed
there according to their disposition and ability to receive; the
places extending round about to a great distance. The good spirits
who are to be instructed are brought by the Lord to these places when
they have completed their second state in the world of spirits, and
yet not all; for there are some that have been instructed in the
world, and have been prepared there by the Lord for heaven, and these
are taken up into heaven by another way-some immediately after death,
some after a short stay with good spirits, where the grosser things
of their thoughts and affections which they had contracted from
honors and riches in the world are removed, and in that way they are
purified. Some first endure vastations, which is effected in places
under the soles of the feet, called the lower earth, where some
suffer severely. These are such as had confirmed themselves in
falsities and yet had led good lives, for when falsities have been
confirmed they inhere with much force, and until they have been
dispersed truths cannot be seen, and thus cannot be accepted. But
vastations and how they are effected have been treated of in the
Arcana Coelestia, from which the notes below have been collected.{1}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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