Men, Only Recipients of Life

Selection from Divine Love ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
THE LORD ALONE IS LOVE ITSELF, BECAUSE HE IS LIFE ITSELF
MEN AND ANGELS ARE RECIPIENTS ONLY

The Lord, because He is God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite; whereas men and angels are created and finite. That which is uncreated and infinite is the very Divine in Itself. It is not possible for man to be formed of this, for he would then be the Divine in Itself; but he can be formed of things created and finite, in which the Divine can be and to which He can communicate His life, and this, by means of heat and light from Himself as a Sun, thus from His Divine Love; it is comparatively like germinations on the earth, which cannot be formed of the essence itself of the world's sun, but of the created things of which the soil consists, in which, by means of its heat and light, the sun can be, and to which it can communicate its life. From this it is evident that men and angels, in themselves, are not life, but only recipients of life.

From the above it follows also that the conception of a human being by a father is not a conceiving of life, but only a conceiving of the first and purest form able to receive life. To this form, as a first thread or beginning, substances and matters adjoin themselves one after another in the womb, adapted into forms for receiving life in its order and in its degree, down to an ultimate form suited to the modes of the world's nature.

(Divine Love II)

The Immortality of Man

Selection from Last Judgment ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

That every man after the life in the world lives to eternity, is evident from this:  man is then spiritual, and no longer natural; the spiritual man, separated from the natural, remains such as he is to eternity - for man's state cannot be changed after death.

Moreover, the spiritual of every man is in conjunction with the Divine, since it can think of the Divine, and also love the Divine, and be affected with all things which are from the Divine, such as those which the church teaches, and therefore it can be conjoined to the Divine by thought and will, which are the two faculties of the spiritual man, and constitute his life. That which can thus be conjoined to the Divine, can never die, for the Divine is with it, and conjoins it to Himself.

Man is also created to the form of heaven as to his mind, and the form of heaven is from the Divine itself, as may be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell, where it has been shown: -

That the Divine of the Lord makes and forms Heaven (n. 7-12, and n. 78-86).

That Man is created to be a Heaven in the least form (n. 57).

That Heaven in the whole complex, has reference to one Man (n. 59-66).

That hence an Angel is in a perfect human Form (n. 73-77); an angel is a man as to his spiritual.

On this subject moreover, I have often spoken with the angels, who wondered exceedingly, that of those who are called intelligent in the Christian world, and who also are believed by others to be intelligent, there are very many who utterly reject the belief in their own immortality, believing that the soul of man is dissipated at death, just as the soul of a beast is, not perceiving the distinction between the life of a man and the life of a beast — that man has the power of thinking above himself, of God, of heaven, of love, of faith, of good, spiritual and moral, of truths, and the like, and that thus he may be elevated to the Divine itself, and he conjoined by all those things to Him. But that beasts cannot be elevated above their own natural, to think of such things, and consequently that their spiritual cannot be separated from their natural after death, so as to live by itself, as man's spiritual can: whence also it is, that the life of a beast ceases on the dissipation of its natural life.

The reason why many of the so-called intelligent in the Christian world, have no belief in the immortality of their own lives, the angels declared to be this, that in heart they deny the Divine, and acknowledge nature instead of the Divine. They who think from such principles, are not able to think of any eternity by conjunction with the Divine, nor consequently, of the state of man as dissimilar to that of beasts, for in rejecting the Divine from thought, they also reject eternity. They declared moreover, that with every man there is an inmost or supreme degree of life, or an inmost or supreme something into which the Divine of the Lord proximately inflows, and from which He disposes all the remaining interiors belonging to the spiritual and natural man, which are successive in both according to the degrees of order. This inmost or supreme they called the Lord's entrance into man, and His veriest dwelling place with him; and they said, that by this inmost or supreme, man is man, and is distinguished from brute animals which do not have it; and that hence it is, that men, as regards the interiors which are of the mind and disposition, unlike animals, can be elevated by the Lord to Himself, can have faith in Him, be affected by love to Him, and can receive intelligence and wisdom, and speak from reason.

When I asked them concerning those who deny the Divine, and the Divine truths, by which the conjunction of the life of man with the Divine itself is effected, and who yet live to eternity, they replied, that these also have the faculty of thinking and of willing, and therefore of believing and loving the things which are from the Divine, as well as those who acknowledge the Divine, and that by this faculty, they too live to eternity. They added, that this faculty is from that inmost or supreme which is in every man, of which mention was made above. Even those who are in hell have that faculty, and that they derive from it the power of reasoning and speaking against Divine truths, has been shown in many places. Hence it is, that every man lives to eternity, whatever be his quality. Because every man after death lives to eternity, no angel or spirit ever thinks of death; indeed they do not at all know what it is to die; wherefore, when "death" is mentioned in the Word, the angels understand by it either damnation, which is death in the spiritual sense, or the continuation of life and the resurrection. These things have been said in confirmation that all the men who have ever been born, and have died, from the beginning of creation, are alive, some in heaven, and some in hell.

(from Last Judgment 25)

Man's Capacity to Understand Truth

Selection from Divine Love and Wisdom ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Every man is born into a capacity to understand truths even to the inmost degree in which the angels of the third heaven are; for the human understanding, rising up by continuity around the two higher degrees, receives the light of their wisdom: —

for his understanding can be elevated even to that extent, and enlightened according to its elevation. But this enlightenment of the natural mind does not ascend by discrete degrees, but increases in a continuous degree, and as it increases, that mind is enlightened from within by the light of the two higher degrees.

How this occurs can be comprehended from a perception of degrees of height, as being one above another, while the natural degree, which is the lowest, is a kind of general covering to the two higher degrees. Then, as the natural degree is raised up towards a degree of the higher kind, the higher acts from within upon the outer natural and illuminates it. This illumination is effected, indeed, from within, by the light of the higher degrees, but the natural degree which envelops and surrounds the higher receives it by continuity, thus more lucidly and purely in proportion to its ascent, that is, from within, by the light of the higher degrees, the natural degree is enlightened discretely, but in itself is enlightened continuously.

From this it is evident that so long as man lives in the world, and is thereby in the natural degree, he cannot be elevated into very wisdom, such as the angels have, but only into higher light, even up to angels, and can receive enlightenment from their light that flows in from within and illuminates. But these things cannot as yet be more clearly described; they can be better comprehended from effects; for effects present causes in themselves in clear light, and thus illustrate them, when there is some previous knowledge of causes.

(from Divine Love and Wisdom 256)

Therefore man has the ability to become rational according to his elevation; if raised to the third degree he becomes rational from that degree, if raised to the second degree he becomes rational from that degree, if not raised he is rational in the first degree.

It is said that he becomes rational from those degrees, because the natural degree is the general receptacle of their light. The reason why man does not become rational to the height that he might is, that love, which is of the will, cannot be raised in the same manner as wisdom, which is of the understanding.

Love, which is of the will, is raised only by fleeing from evils as sins, and then by goods of charity, which are uses, which the man thereafter performs from the Lord.

Consequently, when love, which is of the will, is not at the same time raised, wisdom, which is of the understanding, however it may have ascended, falls back again down to its own love. Therefore, if man's love is not at the same time raised into the spiritual degree, he is rational only in the lowest degree.

From all this it can be seen that man's rational is in appearance as if it were of three degrees, a rational from the celestial, a rational from the spiritual, and a rational from the natural; also that rationality, which is the capacity whereby man is elevated, is still in man whether he be elevated or not.

It has been said that every man is born into that capacity, namely, rationality, but by this is meant every man whose externals have not been injured by some accident, either in the womb, or by some disease after birth, or by a wound inflicted on the head, or in consequence of some insane love bursting forth, and breaking down restraints. In such the rational cannot be elevated; for life, which is of the will and understanding, has in such no bounds in which it can terminate, so disposed that it can produce outmost acts according to order; for life acts in accordance with outmost determinations, though not from them. That there can be no rationality with infants and children.*

(from Divine Love and Wisdom 258-259)

*[As to the capacity to understand, called rationality, this man does not have until his natural mind reaches maturity; until then it is like seed in unripe fruit, which cannot be opened in the soil and grow up into a shrub.]