Selection from Last Judgment ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Heaven is from the human race
Angelic and human minds are similar:
both enjoying the faculty of understanding, of perceiving, and of willing
both being formed for receiving heaven.
EACH ANGEL IS IN A COMPLETE HUMAN FORMHeaven in its whole complex resembles one man, as does any one society in heaven. It follows that this is equally true of each angel. As heaven is Man in the greatest form, and a society of heaven in a less form, so is an angel in the least form. For, in the most perfect form such as that of heaven is, there is a likeness of the whole in the part and of the part in the whole. This is the case for the reason that heaven is a communion, for it communicates all it has with each one, and each one receives all he has from that communion. An angel is a receptacle, and by virtue of this, a heaven in least form, as was also shown above in the appropriate section. A man, too, so far as he receives heaven, is also a receptacle, a heaven and an angel: —What has been said of heaven can be said of the Church, for the Church is the Lord's heaven on earth. There are also many Churches, and yet any one of them is called the Church and indeed is a Church, so far as the good of love and of faith rules there. There again, the Lord out of diversity makes a unity, thus, one Church out of many Churches. The same, too, can be said of the man of the Church in particular as is said of the Church in general, namely, that the Church is within a man and not outside him, and that every man in whom the Lord is present in the good of love and of faith is a Church.
Again, the same can be said of a man in whom is the Church as of an angel in whom is heaven, namely, that he is a Church in least form as an angel is heaven in least form, and furthermore, that a man in whom is the Church, equally with an angel, is a heaven. For man has been created that he may come into heaven and become an angel. Consequently, he who has good from the Lord is an angel-man.
but when man's internal is not opened above, but only below, then still, after its removal from the body, it is in a human form, but a direful and diabolical one, for it cannot look upwards to heaven, but only downwards to hell.It may he mentioned what a man has in common with an angel and what he has in addition to what angels have. A man has this in common with an angel, that his interiors are equally conformed to the image of heaven and that he, too, in so far as he is in the good of love and faith, may become an image of heaven. In addition to what angels have, a man has these things, that his exteriors have been formed according to the image of the world, that so far as he is in good, the world with him is subordinated to heaven and serves heaven, and that then the Lord is present with him in both worlds, just as if he were in his heaven. For the Lord is in His Divine order in both worlds, since God is order. (from Heaven and Hell 57).This is described in the Revelation as follows:He measured the wall of the holy Jerusalem, a hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of a man, that is of an angel. (Rev. 21: 17).Now let us turn to experience. That angels are human forms or men has been seen by me a thousand times. I have talked with them as man with man, sometimes with one, sometimes with several together, and I have seen nothing whatever in their form different from that of man. Sometimes I have marvelled at their being such. Lest this might be said to be a delusion or a vision of fancy, I have been permitted to see them when I was fully awake, in possession of all my bodily senses, and in a state of clear perception. Indeed, I have quite often told them that men in the Christian world are in such blind ignorance about angels and spirits as to believe them to be minds without form, even pure thoughts, of which they have no idea except as something ethereal in which there is some vitality. Because they thus ascribe to them nothing human except a thinking faculty, they believe that, having no eyes they see not, having no ears they hear not, and having no mouth or tongue they speak not.
To this the angels replied that they are aware that such a belief is held by many in the world, and is prevalent among the learned and also, to their amazement, among the clergy. The reason, they said, is that the learned who were the leaders and first propounded such an idea about angels and spirits, thought about them from the sense impressions of the external man, and that men who think from those, and not from interior light and the general idea implanted in everyone, can do no other than invent such notions, since the sense impressions of the external man take in only what belongs to nature, and nothing above nature, thus nothing whatever of the spiritual world. From these leaders as guides, this falsity of thought about angels extended to others who did not think from themselves but from the thoughts of their leaders. Those who first form their thoughts from others, make that thought their belief, and afterwards view it with their understanding, cannot easily recede from it and so, for the most part, acquiesce in confirmation of it.
The angels said, furthermore, that the simple in faith and heart do not have this idea about angels but have an idea of them as men of heaven, for the reason that they have not extinguished, by erudition, what is implanted in them from heaven, neither do they apprehend anything without a form. For a like reason, angels in churches, whether sculptured or painted, are always depicted as men. In respect of what is implanted from heaven they said that it is the Divine flowing into such as are in the good of faith and life.
From all my experience which is now of several years, I can declare and avow that angels as to their form are wholly men, having faces, eyes, ears, bodies, arms, hands and feet, and that they see and hear one another and talk together. In a word, they lack nothing at all that a man has, except that they are not clothed over all with a material body. I have seen them in their own light which exceeds by many degrees the noonday light of the world, and in that light all their features were seen more distinctly and clearly than the faces of men on the earth. It has also been granted me to see an angel of the inmost heaven. He had a more radiant and resplendent face than the angels of the lower heavens. I observed him attentively, and he had a human form in all perfection.
It ought to be known, however, that angels cannot be seen by a man through the eyes of his body but through the eyes of the spirit within him, because this is in the spiritual world, while all things of the body are in the natural world. Like sees like from being alike. Besides, as everyone knows, the bodily organ of sight which is the eye is so gross as to be unable even to see, except through magnifying glasses, the smaller things of nature; still less then can it see the things that are above the sphere of nature such as are all things in the spiritual world. But these things may be seen by a man when he is withdrawn from the sight of the body, and the sight of his spirit is opened. This takes place instantly whenever it pleases the Lord that these things should be seen. In that case, the man does not know but that he is seeing them with his bodily eyes. Angels were seen in this way by Abraham, Lot, Manoah and the Prophets. Thus, too, was the Lord seen by the disciples after the resurrection, and angels have been seen by me in the same way. Because the Prophets saw in this way, they were called "seers", and were said "to have their eyes opened" 1 Sam. 9:9, Num. 24:3, and enabling them to see thus was called "opening their eyes" as with Elisha's lad of whom we read,Elisha prayed and said, Jehovah, I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see; and when Jehovah opened the eyes of his young man, behold, he saw that the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. (2 Kings 6:17).Upright spirits, with whom I have spoken on this matter, have been grieved at heart that there should be such ignorance within the Church about the condition of heaven, and about spirits and angels, and, in their displeasure, they charged me to declare that they are not minds without a form, nor ethereal breaths, but are men in very likeness, and that they see, hear and feel as fully as those who are in the world. (from Heaven and Hell 73-77)
(from Last Judgment 18)