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
85. But that God is man can scarcely be comprehended by those who
judge all things from the sense-conceptions of the external man, for
the sensual man must needs think of the Divine from the world and
what is therein, and thus of a Divine and spiritual man in the same
way as of a corporeal and natural man. From this he concludes that if
God were a man He would be as large as the universe; and if He ruled
heaven and earth it would be done through many others, after the
manner of kings in the world. If told that in heaven there is no
extension of space as in the world, he would not in the least
comprehend it. For he that thinks only from nature and its light must
needs think in accord with such extension as appears before his eyes.
But it is the greatest mistake to think in this way about heaven.
Extension there is not like extension in the world. In the world
extension is determinate, and thus measurable; but in heaven it is
not determinate, and thus not measurable. But extension in heaven
will be further treated of hereafter in connection with space and
time in the spiritual world. Furthermore, everyone knows how far the
sight of the eye extends, namely, to the sun and to the stars, which
are so remote; and whoever thinks deeply knows that the internal
sight, which is of thought, has a still wider extension, and that a
yet more interior sight must extend more widely still. What then must
be said of Divine sight, which is the inmost and highest of all?
Because thoughts have such extension, all things of heaven are shared
with everyone there, so, too, are all things of the Divine which
makes heaven and fills it, as has been shown in the preceding
chapters.
86. Those in heaven wonder that men can believe themselves to be
intelligent who, in thinking of God, think about something invisible,
that is, inconceivable under any form; and that they can call those
who think differently unintelligent and simple, when the reverse is
the truth. They add, "Let those who thus believe themselves to be
intelligent examine themselves, whether they do not look upon nature
as God, some the nature that is before their eyes, others the
invisible side of nature; and whether they are not so blind as not to
know what God is, what an angel is, what a spirit is, what their soul
is which is to live after death, what the life of heaven in man is,
and many other things that constitute intelligence; when yet those
whom they call simple know all these things in their way, having an
idea of their God that He is the Divine in a human form, of an angel
that he is a heavenly man, of their soul that is to live after death
that it is like an angel, and of the life of heaven in man that it is
living in accord with the Divine commandments." Such the angels call
intelligent and fitted for heaven; but the others, on the other hand,
they call not intelligent.
EXTRACTS FROM THE ARCANA COELESTIA RELATING TO THE LORD AND HIS
DIVINE HUMAN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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