Excerpts from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
[N]o man has life from himself, and therefore neither can he think and will from himself, for the life of man consists in thinking and willing. For there is one only life, namely, that of the Lord, which flows into all, but is variously received, and this according to the quality which a man has induced on his soul by his life in the world. [E]veryone has life in accordance with the form of the interiors which he has acquired by willing and acting, thinking and speaking. ...
[T]he influx of life from the Lord, that it flows into all, and that this is evident from heaven, in that heaven resembles a man, and is therefore called the Grand Man of which, and of the correspondence therewith of all things in man ...
[T]he universal heaven has reference to the Lord, and that the Lord is there the center of all the looks, they who are in heaven looking upward to Him, and they who are in hell looking downward from Him. For the Lord appears to those who are in the heavens as a sun above them. ...
[T]he all of life is from the Lord from this fact also, that the soul of man can in the womb so wonderfully form a body, and its manifold members and organs in such a connection, and its interiors according to the image of heaven: this could not possibly be done unless all life were from the Lord, and unless heaven were such as has been described. (Arcana Coelestia 6468)Hence with the evil, goods and truths are turned into evils and falsities; but with the good, goods are received as goods, and truths as truths.
This may be compared to the light which flows into objects from the sun, which is diversely modified and variegated in the objects in accordance with the form of their parts, and hence is turned into colors either sorrowful or gladsome, thus in accordance with the quality.
In like manner while a man lives in this world, he induces on the purest substances that belong to his interior a quality, according to which the Lord's life is received.Be it known that the life from the Lord is the life of love toward the universal human race.
(Arcana Coelestia 6467, 6468)