Selection from Conjugial Love ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Love of children remains after death, especially with women.
On first being raised up, which takes place immediately on death, little ones are taken up into heaven and entrusted to angels of the female sex who in the life of the body in the world had loved children and at the same time had feared God. Having loved all children with maternal tenderness, these women receive the children as their own, and in turn the children, from an implanted instinct, love them as their own mothers. Such mothers are entrusted with as many children as they desire from spiritual storge. The heaven where infants are, appears in front in the region of the forehead, in the line or radius along which angels look directly to the Lord. Their heaven is so situated because all infants are reared under the Lord's immediate auspices. There also flows in with them the heaven of innocence, which is the third heaven. When this first period comes to an end, the children are transferred to another heaven, where they receive instruction.Under the Lord's auspices children are educated by these women,
and grow in stature and intelligence as in the world.
From their teacher they learn to speak. Their first speech is only an utterance of affection, in which however there is an initial something of thought, by which the human in utterance is distinguished from animal sounds. The speech gradually becomes more articulate as ideas enter the thought from affection. All their affections - these also grow - proceed from innocence. First such things are insinuated in them as appear before the eyes and delight them, into which, too, because they have a spiritual origin, there flow things of heaven by which the interiors of the minds are opened. Then, as the children are perfected in intelligence, they also increase in stature, and in this respect also, look more like adults. This is because intelligence and wisdom are spiritual nutriment itself; hence what nourishes their minds also nourishes their bodies there. But children do not grow up in heaven beyond early youth, stopping there and remaining at that age to eternity. On reaching that age they are given in marriage by the Lord's provision; the marriage is celebrated in the heaven where the young man is, who presently follows his wife into her heaven, or into her home if they are in the same society. That I might know for certain that children grow in stature as well as in intelligence, and become adult, I was permitted to speak with some while they were children and later when they had become adult; and as adults they seemed to be of a like stature with grown youths in the world.
Children are instructed especially by means of representatives adapted and suited to their natures, of such beauty and at the same time so replete with interior wisdom that the world can hardly credit it. I may cite two representations here from which others can be imagined. Teachers once represented the Lord's rising from the tomb, and at the same time the union of His human with the Divine. First they presented an idea of a tomb, but no idea at the same time of the Lord except a remote one, so that it was scarcely perceived that it was the Lord except as it were at a distance, for the reason that there is in the idea of a tomb something funereal which they thus removed. Afterwards they discreetly let into the tomb a certain atmospheric something, yet: appearing like a fine watery something, by which they signified, again in seemly remoteness, the spiritual life in baptism. Afterwards I saw them represent the Lord's descent to those who were bound, and His ascent with them into heaven. And what was childlike, they lowered slender cords, almost invisible and very delicate and soft, as if to aid the Lord in His ascent, always devoutly fearful lest anything in the representative might border on what had nothing heavenly in it. There are other representations besides by which children are borne into knowledges of truth and affections of good, as by games agreeable to their infant minds. Children are predisposed by the Lord to these and like representatives through the innocence which comes to them from the third heaven. Spiritual things are thus insinuated into their affections and hence into their tender thoughts in such a way that the children know no otherwise than that they make up and think up such things themselves, and as a result their understanding grows.
The Lord provides in heaven
that the INNOCENCE of INFANCY in children
shall become the INNOCENCE of WISDOM.
When therefore they come into the innocence of wisdom, their childhood's innocence, which had served them meanwhile as a plane, is adjoined.
I saw the nature of childhood's innocence represented by something woody, almost devoid of life, which was vivified as they were imbued with knowledges of truth and affections of good. Afterwards the nature of the innocence of wisdom was represented by a living and naked child. The angels of the third heaven, who more than others are in a state of innocence from the Lord, appear to the eyes of spirits below the heavens as naked children, and being wiser than all others, they are also more alive. The reason is that innocence corresponds to infancy and also to nakedness. Adam and his wife in their state of innocence were therefore said to be naked and not ashamed; but after they lost that state of innocence it is said they were ashamed of their nakedness and hid themselves (Genesis 2:25; 3:7, 10, 11).
In a word, the wiser an angel is, the more innocent he is. The nature of the innocence of wisdom may be seen in a measure from the innocence of childhood ... provided that in the place of the parents the Lord is put as Father, by whom they are led and to whom they ascribe all they receive.
I have spoken with angels at different times about innocence. They have said that innocence is the esse of every good, and that good is good as far as it has innocence in it; also that as wisdom is of the life and hence of good, wisdom is wisdom as far as it partakes of innocence. The same is true, they said, of love, and charity, and faith. Hence it is, too, that no one can enter heaven unless he has innocence, which is the meaning of the Lord's words:
And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them. (Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17).In this, as in other passages in the Word, infants signify those who are in innocence. Good is good as far as it has innocence in it because all good is from the Lord, and innocence consists in being led by Him.
(Conjugial Love 410-414)