Selection from Heaven and Hell ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
IT IS FROM THE LORD'S DIVINE HUMAN THAT HEAVEN AS A WHOLE AND IN PART RESEMBLES A MAN
That it is from the Lord's Divine Human that heaven as a whole and in part resembles a man, follows as a conclusion from all that has been stated and shown in the preceding article, for was shown,- (1) That the Lord is the God of heaven.
- (2) That it is the Divine of the Lord that makes heaven.
- (3) That heaven consists of innumerable societies, and that any one society is a heaven in lesser form, and each angel in the least form.
- (4) That the entire heaven, as one whole, resembles one man.
- (5) That each society in the heavens also resembles one man.
- (6) That therefore each angel is in a complete human form.
That this is true has been proved to me by much experience, about which something will now be said.
All the angels who are in the heavens never perceive the Divine in any other than a human form, and what is wonderful, those in the higher heavens are unable to think of the Divine in any other way. The necessity of their thinking in this way comes from the Divine Itself which inflows, and also from the form of heaven in accordance with which their thoughts extend around. For, every thought that an angel has, is extended into heaven, and he has intelligence and wisdom in accordance with that extension. It is in consequence of this that all in heaven acknowledge the Lord, because there is no Divine Human except in Him. Not only have I been told all this by angels, but when elevated into the inner sphere of heaven, I have been enabled also to perceive it. From this it is evident that the wiser the angels are, the more clearly do they perceive this truth; and it is as a result of this that the Lord appears to them. For the Lord appears in a Divine angelic form which is Human to those who acknowledge and believe in a visible Divine, but not to those who believe in an invisible one. For the former can see their Divine, but the latter cannot see theirs.
Because the angels have no perception of an invisible Divine, which they call a Divine devoid of form, but perceive a visible Divine in Human form, they are accustomed to say that the Lord alone is Man, and that they are men from Him, each one being a man in the measure of his reception of the Lord. By receiving the Lord they mean receiving the good and truth which are from Him, since the Lord is in His good and in His truth. This they call wisdom and intelligence. Everyone knows, they say, that it is intelligence and wisdom that make a man, and not a face without these. The truth of this is evident from the appearance of the angels of the interior heavens, for they, being in good and truth from the Lord, and consequently in wisdom and intelligence, are in the most beautiful and perfect human form, while the angels of the lower heavens are in a human form of less perfection and beauty. In hell, the reverse is the case. Those who are there appear in the light of heaven hardly as men, but as monsters. For they are in evil and falsity and not in good and truth, and so are in the opposites of wisdom and intelligence. For this reason, their life is not called life, but spiritual death.
Because from the Divine Human of the Lord heaven as a whole and in part resembles a man, the angels therefore say that they are in the Lord, and some that they are in His body, meaning that they are in the good of His love. This the Lord Himself teaches, saying,
Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me, . . . For without Me, ye can do nothing.. . . Continue ye in My love. If ye keep My Commandments ye shall abide in My love. John 15:4-10.Such being the perception of the Divine in the heavens, there is implanted in every man who receives any influx from heaven the faculty to think of God in a human shape. The ancients thus thought of Him, and the people of today do so also, both within and outside the Church. The simple see Him in thought as the Ancient One in radiance. But this implanted faculty has been extinguished in all those who, by their self-intelligence and by a life of evil, have driven away the influx from heaven. Those who have extinguished this implanted faculty by self-intelligence desire an invisible God, while those who have extinguished it by a life of evil desire no God. Neither of these are aware that such an implanted faculty is given, because it does not operate with them. Yet it is the very heavenly Divine which primarily inflows from heaven into man, because man has been born for heaven, and no one comes into heaven without an idea of the Divine.
For this reason, he who has no idea of heaven, that is, no idea of the Divine from Whom heaven exists, cannot be raised to the first threshold of heaven. As soon as he comes to it, a resistance and a strong repulsion is perceived. This is because in his case the interiors which should have been receptive of heaven, have been closed on account of their not being in the form of heaven. Indeed, the nearer he comes to heaven, the more tightly are his interiors closed up. Such is the lot of those within the Church who deny the Lord, and of those who, like the Socinians, deny His Divinity. The lot of those, however, who have been born outside the Church and who are ignorant of the Lord because they do not have the Word.
That the ancient peoples had an idea of the Divine as Human is confirmed from the manifestations of the Divine to Abraham, Lot, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah and his wife, and others. They saw God as a Man, but yet adored Him as the God of the universe, calling Him the God of heaven and earth, and Jehovah. That it was the Lord Who was seen by Abraham, He Himself teaches in John 8:56, and that it was He Who was seen by the others is evident from the Lord's words:
No one hath seen the Father, nor His shape, and no one hath heard His voice. John 1:18; 5:37.
THOSE WHO JUDGE ALL THINGS FROM THE SENSE-EXPERIENCES
But, that God is Man can scarcely be comprehended by those who judge all things from the sense-experiences of the external man. For the sensual man can think of the Divine only from the world and the things that are therein, thus of a Divine and Spiritual Man in the same way as of a corporeal and natural man. From this he concludes that, if God were a man He would be as large as the universe, and if He ruled heaven and earth it would be done through many, after the manner of kings in the world. If told that in heaven there is no extension of space as in the world, he would not in the least comprehend. For he who thinks from nature and its light only, never thinks otherwise than from an extension such as there is before his eyes. But they are completely deceived when they think in this way about heaven. The extension there is not like extension in the world. In the world, extension is determinate and thus measurable, but in heaven it is not determinate and therefore not measurable. ... Besides, everyone knows how far the sight of the eye extends, namely, to the sun and stars which are so remote. Whoever thinks more deeply knows that the internal sight, which is that of thought, has a still wider extension and therefore that a still more interior sight must extend even more widely. What, then, must not the Divine sight be which is the inmost and highest of all? Because thoughts are capable of such extension, all things of heaven are communicated with everyone there, so too are all things of the Divine which makes heaven and fills it - as has been shown in the preceding sections.Those in heaven were amazed that men believe themselves intelligent, who, in thinking of God, think of something invisible, that is, incomprehensible under any form, and that they call those who think differently, unintelligent and simple, when yet the reverse is the case. They say if those who thus believe themselves to be intelligent were to examine themselves, would they not see nature as God-some, nature as it is before their eyes, others, the invisible side of nature? And further, are they not so blind that they know not what God is, what an angel is, or a spirit, or their soul which is to live after death, what the life of heaven with man and many other things that are matters of intelligence? Yet, those they call simple know all these things in their way, having an idea of their God that He is the Divine in a Human form, of an angel that he is a heavenly man, of their soul that it is to live after death, that it is like an angel, and of the life of heaven with man that it is to live in accordance with the Divine precepts. These are the ones whom angels call intelligent and fitted for heaven, but the others, on the contrary, not intelligent.
(from Heaven and Hell 78-86)