The Turning of Angels and Spirits to Their Own Loves

Selection from Divine Love and Wisdom ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

EVERY SPIRIT, WHATEVER HIS QUALITY, TURNS IN LIKE MANNER TO HIS RULING LOVE

• What is a Spirit, What is an Angel

It shall first be explained what a spirit is, and what an angel is. Every man after death comes, in the first place, into the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell, and there passes through his own times, that is, his own states, and becomes prepared, according to his life, either for heaven or for hell.

So long as one stays in that world he is called a spirit. He who has been raised out of that world into heaven is called an angel; but he who has been cast down into hell is called either a satan or a devil.

So long as these continue in the world of spirits, he who is preparing for heaven is called an angelic spirit; and he who is preparing for hell, an infernal spirit; meanwhile the angelic spirit is conjoined with heaven, and the infernal spirit with hell.

All spirits in the world of spirits are adjoined to men; because men, in respect to the interiors of their minds, are in like manner between heaven and hell, and through these spirits they communicate with heaven or with hell according to their life.

It is to be observed that the world of spirits is one thing, and the spiritual world another; the world of spirits is that which has just been spoken of; but the spiritual world includes that world, and heaven and hell.

• The Turning of Angels and Spirits to Their Own Loves

Since the subject now under consideration is the turning of angels and spirits to their own loves by reason of these loves, something shall be said also about loves.

The whole heaven is divided into societies according to all the differences of loves; in like manner hell, and in like manner the world of spirits. But heaven is divided into societies according to the differences of heavenly loves; hell into societies according to the differences of infernal loves; and the world of spirits, according to the differences of loves both heavenly and infernal.

There are two loves which are the heads of all the rest, that is, to which all other loves are referable; the love which is the head of all heavenly loves, or to which they all relate, is love to the Lord; and the love which is the head of all infernal loves, or to which they all relate, is the love of rule springing from the love of self. These two loves are diametrically opposed to each other.

Since these two loves — love toward the Lord and a love of ruling stemming from a love of self — are altogether opposed to each other, and because people who are prompted by love toward the Lord all turn to the Lord as the sun, it can be seen that people who are prompted by a love of ruling stemming from a love of self all turn their back to the Lord.

They turn thus in opposite directions for the reason that people who are prompted by love toward the Lord love nothing more than to be led by the Lord, and they want the Lord alone to rule, whereas people who are prompted by a love of ruling stemming from a love of self love nothing more than to lead themselves, and they want only themselves to rule.

We say a love of ruling stemming from a love of self, because a love of ruling is possible that stems from a love of performing useful services, a love which, because it goes hand in hand with love for the neighbor, is a spiritual love. But this love cannot be called a love of ruling, but a love of performing useful services.

Every spirit, of whatever quality, turns to his own ruling love, because love is the life of every one; and life turns its receptacles, called members, organs, and viscera, thus the whole man, to that society which is in a love similar to itself, thus where its own love is.

Since the love of rule springing from love of self is wholly opposed to love to the Lord, the spirits who are in that love of rule turn the face backwards from the Lord, and therefore look with their eyes to the western quarters of the spiritual world; and being thus bodily in a reversed position, they have the east behind them, the north at their right, and the south at their left. They have the east behind them because they hate the Lord; they have the north at their right, because they love fallacies and falsities therefrom; and they have the south at their left, because they despise the light of wisdom. They may turn themselves round and round, and yet all things which they see about them appear similar to their love. All such are sensual-natural; and some are of such a nature as to imagine that they alone live, looking upon others as images. They believe themselves to be wise above all others, though in truth they are insane.

In the spiritual world ways are seen, laid out like ways in the natural world — some leading to heaven, and some to hell — but the ways leading to hell are not visible to those going to heaven, nor are the ways leading to heaven visible to those going to hell. There are countless ways of this kind; for there are ways which lead to every society of heaven and to every society of hell. Each spirit enters the way which leads to the society of his own love, nor does he see the ways leading in other directions. Thus it is that each spirit, as he turns himself to his ruling love, goes forward in it.

(from Divine Love and Wisdom 140 - 145)

Bringing the Natural Mind Back into Correspondent Form

Selection from Divine Love and Wisdom ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
GOD ALONE, CONSEQUENTLY THE LORD, IS LOVE ITSELF, BECAUSE HE IS LIFE ITSELF
AND ANGELS AND MEN ARE RECIPIENTS OF LIFE

The Lord, who is the God of the universe, is uncreate and infinite, whereas man and angel are created and finite. And because the Lord is uncreate and infinite, He is Being [Esse] itself, which is called "Jehovah," and Life itself, or Life in itself. From the uncreate, the infinite, Being itself and Life itself, no one can be created immediately, because the Divine is one and indivisible; but their creation must be out of things created and finited, and so formed that the Divine can be in them. Because men and angels are such, they are recipients of life. Consequently, if any man suffers himself to be so far misled as to think that he is not a recipient of life but is Life, he cannot be withheld from the thought that he is God. A man's feeling as if he were Life, and therefore believing himself to be so, arises from fallacy; for the principal cause is not perceived in the instrumental cause otherwise than as one with it. That the Lord is Life in Himself, He Himself teaches in John:

As the Father hath life in Himself, so also hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself (5:26)

He declares also that He is Life itself (John 11:25; 14:6).

Now since life and love are one, it follows that the Lord, because He is Life itself, is Love itself.

But that this may reach the understanding, it must needs be known positively that the Lord, because He is Love in its very essence, that is, Divine Love, appears before the angels in heaven as a sun, and that from that sun heat and light go forth; the heat which goes forth therefrom being in its essence love, and the light which goes forth therefrom being in its essence wisdom;

that so far as the angels are recipients of that spiritual heat and of that spiritual light, they are loves and wisdoms;

not loves and wisdoms from themselves, but from the Lord. That spiritual heat and that spiritual light not only flow into angels and affect them, but they also flow into men and affect them just to the extent that they become recipients;

and they become recipients in the measure of their love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor.

That sun itself, that is, the Divine Love, by its heat and its light, cannot create any one immediately from itself; for one so created would be Love in its essence, which Love is the Lord Himself; but it can create from substances and matters so formed as to be capable of receiving the very heat and the very light; comparatively as the sun of the world cannot by its heat and light produce germinations on the earth immediately, but only out of earthy matters in which it can be present by its heat and light, and cause vegetation. In the spiritual world the Divine Love of the Lord appears as a sun, and from it proceed the spiritual heat and the spiritual light from which the angels derive love and wisdom.

Since, then, man is not life, but is a recipient of life, it follows that the conception of a man from his father is not a conception of life, but only a conception of the first and purest form capable of receiving life; and to this, as to a nucleus or starting-point in the womb, are successively added substances and matters in forms adapted to the reception of life, in their order and degree.

~~~

Such things as have come to be of the love, and consequently of the life, are engendered in offspring.

It is known that man is born into evil, and that he derives it by inheritance from parents; though by some it is believed that he inherits it not from his parents, but through parents from Adam; this, however, is an error. He derives it from the father, from whom he has a soul that is clothed with a body in the mother. For the seed, which is from the father, is the first receptacle of Life, but such a receptacle as it was with the father;

for the seed is in the form of his love, and each one's love is, in things greatest and least, similar to itself;

and there is in the seed a conatus to the human form, and by successive steps it goes forth into that form.

From this it follows that evils called hereditary are from fathers, thus from grandfathers and great-grandfathers, successively transmitted to offspring.

This may be learned also from observation, for as regards affections, there is a resemblance of races to their first progenitor, and a stronger resemblance in families, and a still stronger resemblance in households; and this resemblance is such that generations are distinguishable not only by the disposition, but even by the face.

This ingeneration of the love of evil by parents in offspring — the correspondence of the mind, that is, of the will and understanding, with the body and its members and organs

Evils are derived from parents successively, and that they increase through the accumulations of one parent after another, until man by birth is nothing but evil; also that the malignity of evil increases according to the degree in which the spiritual mind is closed up, for in this manner the natural mind also is closed above; finally, that there is no recovery from this in posterity except through their fleeing from evils as sins by the help of the Lord. In this and in no other way is the spiritual mind opened, and by means of such opening the natural mind is brought back into correspondent form.

(from Divine Love and Wisdom 4-6; 269)

The State of Life from Good

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Ye shall be men of holiness to Me. (Exodus 22:31) That this signifies the state of life then from good, is evident from the signification of "men of holiness," as being those who are led by the Lord; for the Divine which proceeds from the Lord is holiness itself, consequently those who receive it in faith and also in love are called "holy." He who believes that a man is holy from any other source, and that anything else with him is holy than that which is from the Lord and is received, is very much mistaken. For that which is of man and is called his own, is evil. (Man's own is nothing but evil; and that insofar as a man can be withheld from his own, so far the Lord can he present, thus that so far the man has holiness.)

That the Lord alone is holy, and that that alone is holy which proceeds from the Lord, thus that which man receives from the Lord, is plain from the Word throughout; as in John:

I sanctify Myself that they also may be sanctified in the truth (John 17:19)

"to sanctify Himself" denotes to make Himself Divine by His own power; and those are said to be "sanctified in the truth" who in faith and life receive the Divine truth proceeding from Him.

Therefore also the Lord after His resurrection, speaking with the disciples, "breathed on them" and said unto them, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22); the breathing upon them was representative of making them alive by faith and love, as also in the second chapter of Genesis: "Jehovah breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and man became a living soul" (verse 7); in like manner in other passages (Ps. 33:6; 104:29, 30; Job 32:8; 33:4; John 3:8). From this also the Word is said to be inspired, because it is from the Lord, and they who wrote the Word are said to have been inspired. (Breathing, and thus inspiration, corresponds to the life of faith) From this it is that in the Word "spirit" is so called from "wind" or "breath," and that what is holy from the Lord is called "the wind or breath of Jehovah"; also that the Holy Spirit is the holy proceeding from the Lord.

So also it is said in John that the Lord "baptizeth with the Holy Spirit" (John 1:33); and in Luke that "He baptizeth with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (John 3:16). In the internal sense "to baptize" signifies to regenerate; "to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire" signifies to regenerate by the good of love. ("fire" denotes the good of love.)

In John:

Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? For Thou only art holy (Rev. 15:4).

In Luke it is said by the angel concerning the Lord:

The holy thing that shall be born of thee (Luke 1:35)

In Daniel:

I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold a watcher and a holy one came down from heaven (Dan. 4:13).

In these passages "the holy thing" and "the holy one" denote the Lord.

As the Lord alone is holy, He is called in the Old Testament the "Holy One of Israel," the "Redeemer," the "Preserver," the "Regenerator" (Isa. 1:4; 5:19, 24; 10:20; 12:6; 17:7; 29:19; 30:11, 12, 15; 31:1; 37:23; 41:14, 16, 20; 43:3, 14; 45:11; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7; 54:5; 55:5; 60:9, 14; Jer. 50:29; 51:5; Ezek. 39:7; Ps. 71:22; 88:41; 89:18).

And therefore the Lord in heaven, and consequently heaven itself, is called "the habitation of holiness" (Jer. 31:23; Isa. 63:15; Jer. 25:30); also a "sanctuary" (Ezek. 11:16; 24:21); and "the mountain of holiness" (Ps. 48:1).

For the same reason the middle of the tent, where was the ark containing the Law, was called the "Holy of Holies (Exod. 26:33-34); for by the Law in the ark in the middle of the tent was represented the Lord as to the Word, because "the Law" denotes the Word.

All this shows why the angels are called "holy" (Matt. 25:31; Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26; Ps. 149:1; Dan. 8:13); also the prophets (Luke 1:70); and likewise the apostles (Rev. 18:20); not that they are holy from themselves, but from the Lord, who alone is holy, and from whom alone proceeds what is holy; for by "angels" are signified truths, because they are receptions of truth from the Lord; by "prophets" is signified the doctrine of truth which comes through the Word from the Lord; and by "apostles" are signified in their complex all the truths and goods of faith which are from the Lord.

The sanctifications among the Israelitish and Jewish people were for the purpose of representing the Lord who alone is holy, and the holiness which is from Him alone. This was the purpose of the sanctification of Aaron and his sons (Exod. 29:1, etc.; Lev. 8:10, 11, 13, 30); of the sanctification of their garments (Exod. 29:21, etc.); of the sanctification of the altar, that it might be a holy of holies (Exod. 29:37, etc.); of the sanctification of the tent of the assembly, of the ark of the testimony, of the table, of all the vessels, of the altar of incense, of the altar of burnt-offering, and of the vessels thereof, and of the laver and the base thereof (Exod. 30:26, etc.).

That the Lord is the holiness itself that was represented, is also plain from His words in Matthew, as viewed in the internal sense:

Ye fools and blind! Whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? And whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? (Matt. 23:17, 19)

by the temple was represented the Lord Himself, and also by the altar; and by the "gold" was signified the good which is from the Lord; and by the "gift" or sacrifice, were signified the things that belong to faith and charity from the Lord.

In view of all this it is evident why the sons of Israel were called a "holy people" (Deut. 26:19, and elsewhere); and in the words before us "men of holiness;" namely, from the fact that in every detail of their worship were represented the Divine things of the Lord, and the celestial and spiritual things of His kingdom and church. They were therefore called "holy" in a representative sense. They themselves were not holy on this account, because the representatives had regard to the holy things that were represented, and not to the person who represented them.

Hence also it is that Jerusalem was called "holy;" and Zion, "the mountain of holiness" (Zech. 8:3, and elsewhere).

Also in Matthew:

And the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints that were dead were raised; and coming forth out of their tombs after the Lord's resurrection, they entered into the holy city, and appeared unto many (Matt. 27:52, 53)

Jerusalem is here called "the holy city," although it was rather profane than holy, for the Lord had then been crucified in it, and it is therefore called "Sodom and Egypt" in John:

Their bodies shall lie on the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified (Rev. 11:8).

But it is called "holy" from the fact that it signifies the Lord's kingdom and church. The "saints that were dead" appearing there, which happened to some in vision, signified the salvation of those who were of the spiritual church, and the elevation into the Holy Jerusalem, which is heaven, of those who until that time had been detained in the lower earth.

(from Arcana Coelestia 9229)

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And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD , thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off. (Exodus 24:1)

And bow yourselves afar off. That this signifies humiliation and adoration from the heart, and then the influx of the Lord, is evident from the signification of "bowing oneself" as being humiliation. That it also denotes adoration, is because humiliation is the essential of all adoration and of all worship, for without humiliation the Lord cannot be worshiped and adored, for the reason that the Divine of the Lord cannot flow into a proud heart, that is, into a heart full of the love of self, for such a heart is hard; and is called in the Word a "heart of stone."

But the Divine of the Lord can flow into a humble heart, because this is soft, and is called in the Word a "heart of flesh." Such a heart is receptive of the influx of good from the Lord, that is, of the Lord. From this it is that by "bowing oneself afar off" is not only signified humiliation and adoration from the heart, but also the influx of the Lord then. It is said the influx of the Lord, because the good of love and of faith, which flows in from the Lord, is the Lord. That "afar off" denotes from the heart, is because those who are in humiliation remove themselves from the Lord, for the reason that they regard themselves as unworthy to approach the most holy Divine, because while they are in humiliation they are in the self-acknowledgment that of themselves they are nothing but evil, nay, profane. When they acknowledge this from the heart, they are in true humiliation. From this it is evident that by "bow yourselves afar off" is signified humiliation and adoration from the heart, and the influx of the Lord then.

But the people of Israel were not in such humiliation and adoration, and only represented it by external gestures; for they were in external things apart from internal. Nevertheless when they humbled themselves they prostrated themselves to the earth, and also rolled in the dust, and cried out with a loud voice, and this for whole days.  One who does not know what true humiliation is, could believe that this was humiliation of heart; but it was not the humiliation of a heart that looks to God from God, but of one that looks to God from self; and a heart that looks from self, looks from evil, for whatever proceeds from man as from himself is evil. The people of Israel were in the love of self and of the world more than all other peoples in the whole world, and believed themselves holy, provided they merely offered sacrifice, or washed themselves with water, not acknowledging that such things represented internal holiness, which belongs to charity and faith from the Lord. For all that is holy is not of man, but is of the Lord with man.

They who humble themselves from belief in a holiness which is from themselves, and who adore from a love of God which is from themselves, humble themselves and adore from the love of self, thus from a heart that is hard and "of stone;" and not from a heart that is soft, and "of flesh;" and they are in external things and not at the same time in internal; for the love of self dwells in the external man, and cannot enter into the internal man, because the internal man is opened solely through love to and faith in the Lord, thus by the Lord, who therein forms man's heaven in which He dwells.

(from Arcana Coelestia 9377)