Doing From Love What Wisdom Teaches

Selection from Divine Love and Wisdom ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

In man love and wisdom appear as two separate things, yet in themselves they are one distinctly, because with man wisdom is such as the love is, and love is such as the wisdom is.

• The wisdom that does not make one with its love appears to be wisdom, but it is not

• The love that does not make one with its wisdom appears to be the love of wisdom, but it is not 

— for the one must derive its essence and its life reciprocally from the other. 

With man love and wisdom appear as two separate things, because with him the capacity for understanding may be elevated into the light of heaven, but not the capacity for loving, except so far as he acts according to his understanding. Any apparent wisdom, therefore, which does not make one with the love of wisdom, sinks back into the love which does make one with it - this may be a love of unwisdom, yea, of insanity. Thus a man may know from wisdom that he ought to do this or that, and yet he does not do it, because he does not love it. 

But so far as a man does from love what wisdom teaches, he is an image of God.

(Divine Love and Wisdom 39)

Where The Lord's Divine Influx Terminates

Selection from Heaven and Hell ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Man is so created as to have a conjunction and connection with the Lord, but with the angels of heaven only an association. Man has association with the angels, but not conjunction, because in respect of the interiors of his mind man is by creation like an angel, having a like will and a like understanding. Consequently, if a man has lived in accordance with the Divine order he becomes after death an angel, with the same wisdom as an angel. Therefore, when the conjunction of man with heaven is spoken of, his conjunction with the Lord and association with the angels is meant; for heaven is not heaven from the proprium of the angels but from the Divine of the Lord.

It is the Divine of the Lord that makes heaven.

But man has, in addition, what angels do not have, that he is not only in respect of his interiors in the spiritual world, but also at the same time in respect of his exteriors in the natural world. His exteriors which are in the natural world are all things of his natural or external memory and of his thought and imagination therefrom; in general, cognitions and knowledges with their delights and pleasures so far as they savour of the world, also many pleasures pertaining to the sensual things of the body, together with his senses themselves, his speech, and his actions. And all these are the ultimates in which the Lord's Divine influx terminates; for that influx does not stop midway, but goes on to its ultimates. All this shows that the ultimate of Divine order is in man; and being the ultimate it is also the basis and foundation.

As the Lord's Divine influx does not stop midway but goes on to its ultimates, as has been said, and as this middle part through which it passes is the angelic heaven, while the ultimate is with man, and as nothing can exist unconnected, it follows that the connection and conjunction of heaven with the human race is such that one continues in existence from the other, and that the human race apart from heaven would be like a chain without a hook; and heaven without the human race would be like a house without a foundation.

(Heaven and Hell 304)

The State of a Man's Life

Excerpt from The True Christian Religion - A Memorable Relation ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

The joys of heaven and eternal happiness are not a matter of place, but of the state of man's life, and the state of heavenly life is from love and wisdom; and as use is the containant of these two, the state of heavenly life is from the conjunction of these in use.

It is the same if we say instead, charity, faith, and good works, since charity is love, faith is truth from which comes wisdom, and good works are uses. Furthermore, there are places in our spiritual world as in the natural world, otherwise there would be no habitations or distinct dwellings; and yet place here is not place, but an appearance of place in accordance with the state of love and wisdom, or charity and faith.

Everyone who becomes an angel carries his heaven within him, because he carries within him the love that belongs to his heaven; for man by creation is a lesser likeness, image, and type of the great heaven; and the human form is nothing else; so that everyone enters that heavenly society whose form he is as an individual likeness; consequently when he enters into that society he enters a form correspondent to his own, thus he enters the society as if entering into himself from himself, and as if from the society into the society in himself, and partakes of its life as his own, and of his own life as its life. Every society is like a common body, the angels therein are the like parts of which the general exists.

From this it now follows that those who are in evils and in consequent falsities, have formed in themselves a likeness of hell, and this is what suffers torture in heaven from the influx and vehemence of the activity of opposite against opposite; for infernal love is the opposite of heavenly love, and the delights of the two loves come into collision like hostile forces, and destroy each other when they meet.

(Excerpt from True Christian Religion 739:7-8)