Selection from Divine Providence ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
The more nearly a man is conjoined with the Lord the happier he becomes.
About the degrees of happiness the same may be said as was seen in yesterday's article, about the degrees of life and of wisdom in the measure of conjunction with the Lord. For happiness, that is, beatitudes and pleasures, are exalted as the higher degrees of the mind, which are called spiritual and celestial, are opened in man; and after his life in the world these degrees are enlarged to eternity.
No one who is in the pleasures of the lusts of evil can know anything about the pleasures of affections for good in which the angelic heaven is; for these two kinds of pleasure are directly opposite to each other in internals, and therefore interiorly are opposite in externals; although they differ little on the mere surface. For every love has its own pleasures, even the love of evil in those who are in lusts, such as the love of committing adultery, taking revenge, defrauding, stealing, doing cruel deeds, and in the most wicked even the love of blaspheming the holy things of the church, and of chattering venomously against God.The love of ruling from love of self is the fountain head of these pleasures. They are from the lusts that beset the interiors of the mind; and from the interiors they flow down into the body, and there excite the unclean things that titillate the fibers; and thus bodily pleasure springs from the mind's pleasure in accord with the lusts.
What kinds of unclean things there are that titillate the bodily fibers of such persons it is granted to every one after death to know in the spiritual world. They are in general cadaverous, excrementitious, stercoraceous, reeking, and urinous things, for the hells of such abound in these unclean things. That these are correspondences can be seen in the work on The Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom (n. 422-424). But after they have entered hell these filthy pleasures are turned into direful things. All this has been said that it may be understood what the happiness of heaven is, and the nature of it, which will now be considered. For every thing is known from its opposite.
The joys, satisfactions, pleasures, and delights, in a word, the happinesses of heaven, cannot be described in words, although in heaven they are perceptible to the feeling; for what is perceptible to the feeling only cannot be described, because it does not fall into ideas of thought, and thus not into words; for it is the understanding alone that sees; and it sees the things that pertain to wisdom or truth, and not the things that pertain to love or good. For this reason these happinesses are inexpressible; nevertheless they are exalted in a like degree with wisdom. Their varieties are infinite, and each is ineffable. This I have heard and perceived.
And yet these happinesses enter as man puts away the lusts of love of evil and falsity as if of himself, although from the Lord; for these happinesses are the happinesses of the affections for good and truth, and are the opposites of the lusts of the love of evil and falsity. The happinesses of affections of the love of good and truth begin from the Lord, thus from the inmost; and they pour themselves forth therefrom into lower things even to the lowest, and thus fill the angel, making him to be as it were wholly a delight. Such happinesses in infinite variety are in every affection for good and truth, especially in an affection for wisdom.
The pleasures of the lusts for evil and the pleasures of affections for good cannot be compared; because the devil is inwardly in the pleasures of lusts for evil, and the Lord is inwardly in the pleasures of affections for good. If a comparison must be made, the pleasures of lusts for evil can only be compared to the lewd pleasures of frogs in ponds, or of snakes in putrid places; while the pleasures of affections for good may be compared to the delights of the mind in gardens and flower-beds. For the same things that affect frogs and snakes affect those in the hells who are in the lusts for evil; and the same things that affect the mind in gardens and flower-beds affect those in the heavens who are in affections for good; for, as has been said above, corresponding unclean things affect the evil, and corresponding clean things affect the good.
From all this it can be seen that the more nearly any one is conjoined with the Lord the happier he becomes. But this happiness is rarely manifest in the world; for man is then in a natural state, and the natural does not communicate with the spiritual by continuity but by correspondences; and this communication is felt only in a certain quiet and peace of mind, that especially follows combats against evils. But when man puts off the natural state and enters the spiritual state, which he does after his departure from the world, the happiness described above gradually manifests itself.
(Divine Providence 37-41)