Selection from Divine Wisdom ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
All things created have been created to serve the purposes of Life Itself, which is the Lord.First, something must be said about Life, and afterwards about all things being created to serve the purposes of Life.
Life is love and wisdom; for to the extent that any one loves God and the neighbour, wisdom showing the way, to that extent he lives. Life Itself, however, which is the Life of all, is the Divine Love and Wisdom: the Divine Love is the Being (Esse) of Life, and the Divine Wisdom is its Existing (Existere): the latter united to the former reciprocally is the Lord. Both, the Divine Being (Esse) and the Divine Existing (Existere), are Infinite and Eternal, for the Divine Love is Infinite and Eternal, and so is the Divine Wisdom. Nevertheless, both the one and the other can have conjunction with an angel or with a man, although no ratio exists between what is finite and what is infinite. As however it is difficult to conceive how there can be conjunction when there is no ratio between them, this needs explaining.
No ratio exists between what is natural and what is spiritual, BUT there is conjunction between them by means of correspondences; nor does any ratio exist between the spiritual in which angels of the ultimate heaven are and the celestial in which angels of the highest heaven are, but there is conjunction between them by means of correspondences; similarly, no ratio exists between the celestial in which angels of the highest heaven are and the Divine of the Lord, nevertheless there is conjunction between them by means of correspondences. The nature of conjunction by means of correspondences has been declared and demonstrated elsewhere.
That the Divine is Infinite and Eternal is because it is the All in all things of the life of love and wisdom with angels and men; angels and men are created recipients of life from the Lord, thus finite, whereas the Lord is uncreate, in Himself Life and consequently Life Itself. Therefore, if men, and angels and spirits from men, were to be multiplied to eternity, it would still be that the Lord gives them life, and from Himself leads them in the very least things, in this there is what is eternal, and where the eternal is, there, also, is what is infinite. As no ratio exists between what is infinite and what is finite, let every one be on their guard against thinking of the Infinite as nothing; one cannot say of "nothing" that it is infinite and eternal, nor can "nothing" be said to have conjunction with anything; nor out of "nothing" can anything be made. On the contrary the Infinite and Eternal Divine is the very Being (Esse) Itself, from Whom is created the finite with which there can be conjunction.
This could be illustrated much more fully however, by a comparison of natural and spiritual things, between which, though there is no ratio, there is conjunction by means of correspondences. Such is the relation [ratio] existing between every cause and its effect, and between everything "that precedes" (prior) and "what follows from it" (posterior), such also is the relation between a higher degree and a lower one, such the relation between men's love and wisdom and the love and wisdom of angels; even so, the love and wisdom of angels, although ineffable and incomprehensible to men, are still no more than finite and are incapable of grasping what is infinite, except through the medium of correspondences.
That all things have been created to serve the purposes of Life, which is the Lord, is a consequence in its turn of the fact that men, and angels from them, have been created for the receiving of life from the Lord, and are indeed nothing else than receptacles, although, because of the freedom in which they are held by the Lord, they seem not to be receptacles; none the less, however, receptacles they are, both the good and the wicked; for the freedom also, in which they are held, is from the Lord.
The life of men and angels consists in understanding and thence thinking and speaking, and in willing and thence doing; accordingly these are also constituents of life from the Lord, for they are effects of that life. All created things in the world have been created for the use of mankind, or for their benefit, or for them to find pleasure in, some things directly so, others less directly. Because, then, all these things have been created for the sake of mankind, it follows that they exist to serve the purposes of the Lord Who is the life with men. It seems, because the good live from the Lord, as if the serving of those purposes exists with them, but not with the wicked; yet the fact is that things created yield use, benefit and pleasure to the wicked the same as to the good. For the Lord says:
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. (Matthew v. 45 )That the wicked also do not possess any life of themselves, and that they are led throughout by the Lord, notwithstanding their being ignorant of it and not wishing it, can be seen in the passages treating of the life of those in hell.
(from Divine Wisdom 12:4)
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Selection from Apocalypse Explained ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
The Lord by the intellectual faculty that each man has, or its opposite, is also present with those who are out of heaven and the church, with those who are in hell or who are to come into hell, and knows their whole state. Every man has three degrees of life, a lowest in common with beasts, and two higher that are not in common with beasts. By these two higher degrees man is a man; these are closed with the evil, but with the good are open. And yet, in regard to the light of heaven, which is the wisdom that proceeds from the Lord as a sun, these two degrees are not closed with the evil, but are closed in regard to the heat, which is the love, that at the same time proceeds therefrom. From this it is that every man, even an evil man, has a capacity to understand, but not a capacity to will from heavenly love, for the will is a receptacle of heat, that is, of love, and the understanding is a receptacle of light, that is, of wisdom, from that sun.The reason why every man is not intelligent and wise is that some have by their lives closed up in themselves the receptacle of that love, and when that is closed they have no wish to understand anything except what they love, for that only do they wish and love to think about and thus understand. And as every man, even an evil man, has an ability to understand, and that ability is from an influx of light from the sun which is the Lord, it is clear that the Lord is also present with those who are out of heaven and the church, who are either in hell or are to come into hell. It is from the same ability that man is able to think and reason about various things, which beasts cannot do. It is from the same ability that man lives forever.
Another proof of the Lord's omnipresence in hell is that the entire hell, like the entire heaven, is before the Lord as one man, but as a man-devil or a man-monster; and in this all things are in opposition to those that are in the Divine man-angel, consequently from this latter everything that is in the former can be known, that is, from heaven everything that is in hell; for evil is known from good and falsity from truth, thus the entire quality of the one from the quality of the other.
There are three heavens, and there are three hells; and as the heavens are divided into societies so are the hells; and each society of hell corresponds by opposition to a society of heaven. The correspondence is like that between good affections and evil affections, for all societies are affections. So in the same way that each society of heaven, as has been said, is in the Lord's sight as one man-angel in the likeness of its affection, each society of hell is in the Lord's sight as one man-devil in the likeness of its evil affection. This, too, it has been granted me to see. They appear like men, but monstrous. I have seen three kinds of them, the fiery, the black, and the pallid, but all of them with deformed faces, a husky voice, external speech, and like gestures. They all have a lascivious love, and not one of them a chaste love. The delights of their will are evils, and the delights of their thoughts are falsities.
(from Apocalypse Explained 1224:2-5)