Heaven and Hell: From the Human Race

Selection from Last Judgment ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Heaven does not consist of any angels created in the beginning
nor hell of any devil and his crew
but solely of those who have been born men.

The human race is the basis on which heaven is founded, is because man was last created, and that which is last created is the basis of all that precedes.

Creation commenced from the supreme or inmost, because from the Divine and proceeded to ultimates or extremes, and then first subsisted.  The ultimate of creation is the natural world, including the terraqueous globe, with all things on it. When these were finished, then man was created, and into him were collated all things of Divine order from firsts to lasts — into his inmost were collated those things of that order which are primary and into his ultimates those which are ultimate; so that man was made Divine order in form. Hence it is that all things in man and with man, are both from heaven and from the World, those of his mind from heaven, and those of his body from the world; for the things of heaven flow into his thoughts and affections, and dispose them according to reception by his spirit, and the things of the world flow into his sensations and pleasures, and dispose them according to reception in his body, but still in accommodation to their agreement with the thoughts and affections of his spirit. ...

From this order of creation it may appear, that such is the binding chain of connection from firsts to lasts that all things together make one, in which the prior cannot be separated from the posterior (just as a cause cannot be separated from its effect); and that thus the spiritual world cannot be separated from the natural, nor the natural world from the spiritual; thence neither the angelic heaven from the human race, nor the human race from the angelic heaven.

Wherefore it is so provided by the Lord, that each shall afford a mutual assistance to the other, that is, the angelic heaven to the human race, and the human race to the angelic heaven. Hence it is, that the angelic mansions are indeed in heaven, and to appearance separate from the mansions where men are; and yet they are with man in his affections of good and truth. Their presentation to sight, as separate, is from appearances. ... That the mansions of angels are with men in their affections of good and truth, is meant by these words of the Lord:

He who loveth Me, keepeth my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our mansion with him (John 14:23).

By "the Father" and "the Lord" in the above passage is also meant heaven, for where the Lord is, there is heaven, since the Divine proceeding from the Lord makes heaven. And likewise by these words of the Lord:

The Comforter the Spirit of Truth abideth with you, and is in you (John 14:17)

"The Comforter" is the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, for which reason He is also called "the Spirit of truth," and the Divine truth makes heaven, and also the angels, because they are recipients; that the Divine proceeding from the Lord is the Divine truth, and that the angelic heaven is from it. The like is also understood by these words of the Lord:

The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21).

"The kingdom of God" is the Divine good and truth, in which the angels are.

That angels and spirits are with man, and in his affections, has been granted me to see a thousand times, from their presence and abode with me; but angels and spirits do not know with what men they are, neither do men know the angels and spirits they cohabit with, for the Lord alone knows and disposes this. In a word: —

There is an extension into heaven of all the affections of good and truth, and a communication and conjunction with those who are in the like affections there.

There is an extension into hell of all the affections of evil and falsity, and a communication and conjunction with these who are in the like affections there.

The extension of the affections into the spiritual world, is almost like that of sight into the natural world; communications in both are nearly similar; yet with this difference, that in the natural world there are objects, but in the spiritual world angelic societies.

Hence it appears, that the connection of the angelic heaven with the human race is such that the one subsists from the other, and that the angelic heaven without the human race would be like a house without a foundation, for heaven closes into it and rests upon it.

The case herein is the same as with each particular man; his spiritual things, which pertain to his thought and will, inflow into his natural things, which pertain to his sensations and actions, and in these they terminate and subsist. If man were not in possession of them, that is, if he were without these boundings and ultimates, his spiritual things, which pertain to the thoughts and affections of his spirit, would flow away, like things unbounded, or like those which have no foundation.

In like manner, when a man passes from the natural into the spiritual world, which takes place when he dies, then because he is a spirit, he no longer subsists on his own basis, but upon the common basis, which is the human race. He who knows not the arcana of heaven, may believe that angels subsist without men, and men without angels; but I can affirm from all my experience of heaven, and from all my discourse with the angels, that no angel or spirit subsists without man, and no man without spirits and angels, but that there is a mutual and reciprocal conjunction.

From this, it may now be seen that the human race and the angelic heaven make one, and mutually and reciprocally subsist from each other, and thus that the one cannot be taken away from the other.

(Last Judgment 9)

Heaven and Hell: From the Human Race

Heaven and hell are from the human race, the church moreover might have known from the Word, and made it a part of its doctrine, if it had admitted enlightenment from heaven, and had attended to the Lord's words to the robber, that:

Today he should be with Him in paradise (Luke 23:43)

and to those which the Lord spake concerning the rich man and Lazarus, that:

The one went to hell, and spoke thence with Abraham, and that the other went to heaven (Luke 16:19-31)

Also to what the Lord told the Sadducees respecting the resurrection, that:

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matt. 22:32).

And furthermore they might have known it from the common faith of all who live well, especially from their faith in the hour of death, when they are no longer in worldly and corporeal things, in that they believe they will go to heaven, as soon as the life of their body departs. This faith prevails with all, so long as they do not think, from the doctrine of the church, of a resurrection at the time of the Last Judgment. Inquire into the subject and you will be confirmed that it is so.

He who has been instructed concerning Divine order, may moreover understand, that man was created to become an angel, because in him is the ultimate of order, in which ultimate, whatever belongs to celestial and angelic wisdom may be formed, renewed, and multiplied. Divine order never subsists in the mediate, so as to form anything there without an ultimate, for it is not in its own fullness and perfection, but it proceeds to the ultimate. But when it is in its ultimate, it then forms, and also by mediates there collated, renews and produces itself farther, which is effected by procreations; wherefore the seminary of heaven is there. This also is meant by the things related of man, and of his creation in the first chapter of Genesis:

God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and God created man in His image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them; and God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply (vers. 26-28).

"To create in the image of God, and in the likeness of God," is to confer upon man all things of Divine order from firsts to ultimates, and thus to make him an angel as to the interiors of his mind.

That the Lord rose again not only as to the Spirit, but also as to the Body, is because the Lord, when He was in the world, glorified His whole Human, that is, made it Divine. For the soul, which He had from the Father, was the Divine Itself from Himself, and the body was made a similitude of the soul, that is of the Father, and therefore also Divine. Hence it is that He Himself, unlike any man, rose again as to both; which He also manifested to His disciples, who believed they saw a spirit when they saw Him; for he said:

Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself: feel Me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have (Luke 24:36-39).

By which He pointed out that He was not only Man as to the Spirit, but also as to the body.

(Last Judgment 19-21)

Man rises again as to the spirit only (Arcana Coelestia nos. 10593, 10594). The Lord alone rose as to the body also (Arcana Coelestia nos. 1729, 2083, 5078, 10825).

Created to Become an Angel

Selection from Last Judgment ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Heaven is from the human race
Angelic and human minds are similar:
both enjoying the faculty of understanding, of perceiving, and of willing
both being formed for receiving heaven.

The human mind possesses wisdom as well as the angelic; but it is not so wise in the world, because it is in a terrestrial body, in which its spiritual mind thinks naturally, for its spiritual thought, which it has in common with an angel, then flows down into the natural ideas corresponding with the spiritual, and is thus perceived in them. But it is otherwise when the mind of man is freed from its connection with the body; then it no longer thinks naturally but spiritually; and when spiritually it then thinks what is incomprehensible and ineffable to the natural man, as an angel does. Hence it is evident, that man's internal, which is called his spirit, in its essence is an angel.

EACH ANGEL IS IN A COMPLETE HUMAN FORM

Heaven in its whole complex resembles one man, as does any one society in heaven. It follows that this is equally true of each angel. As heaven is Man in the greatest form, and a society of heaven in a less form, so is an angel in the least form. For, in the most perfect form such as that of heaven is, there is a likeness of the whole in the part and of the part in the whole. This is the case for the reason that heaven is a communion, for it communicates all it has with each one, and each one receives all he has from that communion. An angel is a receptacle, and by virtue of this, a heaven in least form, as was also shown above in the appropriate section. A man, too, so far as he receives heaven, is also a receptacle, a heaven and an angel: —

What has been said of heaven can be said of the Church, for the Church is the Lord's heaven on earth. There are also many Churches, and yet any one of them is called the Church and indeed is a Church, so far as the good of love and of faith rules there. There again, the Lord out of diversity makes a unity, thus, one Church out of many Churches. The same, too, can be said of the man of the Church in particular as is said of the Church in general, namely, that the Church is within a man and not outside him, and that every man in whom the Lord is present in the good of love and of faith is a Church.

Again, the same can be said of a man in whom is the Church as of an angel in whom is heaven, namely, that he is a Church in least form as an angel is heaven in least form, and furthermore, that a man in whom is the Church, equally with an angel, is a heaven. For man has been created that he may come into heaven and become an angel. Consequently, he who has good from the Lord is an angel-man. 

It may he mentioned what a man has in common with an angel and what he has in addition to what angels have. A man has this in common with an angel, that his interiors are equally conformed to the image of heaven and that he, too, in so far as he is in the good of love and faith, may become an image of heaven. In addition to what angels have, a man has these things, that his exteriors have been formed according to the image of the world, that so far as he is in good, the world with him is subordinated to heaven and serves heaven, and that then the Lord is present with him in both worlds, just as if he were in his heaven. For the Lord is in His Divine order in both worlds, since God is order.    (from Heaven and Hell 57).

This is described in the Revelation as follows:

He measured the wall of the holy Jerusalem, a hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of a man, that is of an angel. (Rev. 21: 17).

Now let us turn to experience. That angels are human forms or men has been seen by me a thousand times. I have talked with them as man with man, sometimes with one, sometimes with several together, and I have seen nothing whatever in their form different from that of man. Sometimes I have marvelled at their being such. Lest this might be said to be a delusion or a vision of fancy, I have been permitted to see them when I was fully awake, in possession of all my bodily senses, and in a state of clear perception. Indeed, I have quite often told them that men in the Christian world are in such blind ignorance about angels and spirits as to believe them to be minds without form, even pure thoughts, of which they have no idea except as something ethereal in which there is some vitality. Because they thus ascribe to them nothing human except a thinking faculty, they believe that, having no eyes they see not, having no ears they hear not, and having no mouth or tongue they speak not.

To this the angels replied that they are aware that such a belief is held by many in the world, and is prevalent among the learned and also, to their amazement, among the clergy. The reason, they said, is that the learned who were the leaders and first propounded such an idea about angels and spirits, thought about them from the sense impressions of the external man, and that men who think from those, and not from interior light and the general idea implanted in everyone, can do no other than invent such notions, since the sense impressions of the external man take in only what belongs to nature, and nothing above nature, thus nothing whatever of the spiritual world. From these leaders as guides, this falsity of thought about angels extended to others who did not think from themselves but from the thoughts of their leaders. Those who first form their thoughts from others, make that thought their belief, and afterwards view it with their understanding, cannot easily recede from it and so, for the most part, acquiesce in confirmation of it.

The angels said, furthermore, that the simple in faith and heart do not have this idea about angels but have an idea of them as men of heaven, for the reason that they have not extinguished, by erudition, what is implanted in them from heaven, neither do they apprehend anything without a form. For a like reason, angels in churches, whether sculptured or painted, are always depicted as men. In respect of what is implanted from heaven they said that it is the Divine flowing into such as are in the good of faith and life.

From all my experience which is now of several years, I can declare and avow that angels as to their form are wholly men, having faces, eyes, ears, bodies, arms, hands and feet, and that they see and hear one another and talk together. In a word, they lack nothing at all that a man has, except that they are not clothed over all with a material body. I have seen them in their own light which exceeds by many degrees the noonday light of the world, and in that light all their features were seen more distinctly and clearly than the faces of men on the earth. It has also been granted me to see an angel of the inmost heaven. He had a more radiant and resplendent face than the angels of the lower heavens. I observed him attentively, and he had a human form in all perfection.

It ought to be known, however, that angels cannot be seen by a man through the eyes of his body but through the eyes of the spirit within him, because this is in the spiritual world, while all things of the body are in the natural world. Like sees like from being alike. Besides, as everyone knows, the bodily organ of sight which is the eye is so gross as to be unable even to see, except through magnifying glasses, the smaller things of nature; still less then can it see the things that are above the sphere of nature such as are all things in the spiritual world. But these things may be seen by a man when he is withdrawn from the sight of the body, and the sight of his spirit is opened. This takes place instantly whenever it pleases the Lord that these things should be seen. In that case, the man does not know but that he is seeing them with his bodily eyes. Angels were seen in this way by Abraham, Lot, Manoah and the Prophets. Thus, too, was the Lord seen by the disciples after the resurrection, and angels have been seen by me in the same way. Because the Prophets saw in this way, they were called "seers", and were said "to have their eyes opened" 1 Sam. 9:9, Num. 24:3, and enabling them to see thus was called "opening their eyes" as with Elisha's lad of whom we read,

Elisha prayed and said, Jehovah, I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see; and when Jehovah opened the eyes of his young man, behold, he saw that the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. (2 Kings 6:17).

Upright spirits, with whom I have spoken on this matter, have been grieved at heart that there should be such ignorance within the Church about the condition of heaven, and about spirits and angels, and, in their displeasure, they charged me to declare that they are not minds without a form, nor ethereal breaths, but are men in very likeness, and that they see, hear and feel as fully as those who are in the world. (from Heaven and Hell 73-77)

but when man's internal is not opened above, but only below, then still, after its removal from the body, it is in a human form, but a direful and diabolical one, for it cannot look upwards to heaven, but only downwards to hell.

(from Last Judgment 18)

Man: An Abode and Temple of God

Selection from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
MAN IS NOT LIFE, BUT A RECEPTACLE OF LIFE FROM GOD.

It is generally believed that life is in man as his own, thus that he is not only a receptacle of life, but is also life. This general belief is from its so appearing, since man lives; that is, feels, thinks, speaks, and acts, wholly as if from himself. Wherefore the statement that man is a receptacle of life, and not life, must needs seem like something unheard of, or like a paradox, because it is opposed to the appearance, and thus to sensual thought. The cause of the fallacious belief that man is also life itself, consequently that life was created in man and afterward generated by parents, I have adduced from the appearance; but the reason why the fallacy is drawn from the appearance, is that most men at the present day are natural, and but few are spiritual, and the natural man judges from appearances and their fallacies, which are diametrically opposed to the truth that man is not life but only a receptacle of life.

That man is not life but a receptacle of life from God can be seen from these evident proofs, that all created things are in themselves finite (having limits or bounds), and that man, being finite, could have been created only from things finite. Therefore it is said in the Book of Creation, that Adam was made from the earth and its dust, from which he was also named, for "Adam" means the earth's soil; and it is a fact that every man consists only of such things as are in the earth, and from the earth in the atmospheres. Those things that are in the atmospheres from the earth man absorbs by means of his lungs and the pores of his whole body, and the grosser elements he absorbs by means of food composed of earthy substances.

But in regard to man's spirit - that also is created from finite things. What is man's spirit but a receptacle of the life of the mind? The finite things of which it is composed are spiritual substances, which are in the spiritual world, and are also brought together in our earth and hidden therein. Unless they were therein along with material things, no seed could be impregnated from things inmost, and then grow in a wonderful manner undeviatingly from the first shoot even to fruit and to new seed. Neither could any worms be procreated from effluvia from the earth and exhalations from vegetable matters, with which the atmospheres are impregnated.

Who can think rationally that the infinite can create anything but finite things, and that man, being finite, is anything but a form which the infinite can vivify from the life in itself? And this is what is meant by these words: —

Jehovah God formed man, the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives (Gen. 2:7).

God, because He is infinite, is Life in Himself. This He cannot create and then transfer into man, for that would be to make man God. That this was done was the insane idea of the serpent or the devil, and from him of Adam and Eve; for the serpent said: —

In the day ye eat of the fruit of this tree your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God (Gen. 3:5).

This dire persuasion, that God transfused and transferred Himself into men, was held by the men of the Most Ancient church at its end, when it was consummated. This I have heard from their own mouths; and on account of that horrible belief that they were consequently gods, they lie deeply hidden in a cavern near to which no one can approach without being seized by an inward dizziness which causes him to fall. That the Most Ancient church is meant and described by Adam and his wife ...

Who does not see, when he is able to think from reason elevated above the sensual things of the body, that life is not creatable? For what is life but the inmost activity of the love and wisdom that are in God and are God, which life, indeed, may be called the essential living force? He who sees this can also see that this life cannot be transferred into any man, except in connection with love and wisdom. Who denies or can deny that every good of love and every truth of wisdom is solely from God, and that so far as man receives these from God he lives from God, and is said to be born of God, that is, regenerated? On the other hand, so far as one does not receive love and wisdom, or what is the same, charity and faith, he does not receive from God the life that is life in itself, but life from hell, and this is no other than inverted life which is called spiritual death.

From the foregoing it can be perceived and concluded that the following things are not creatable, namely:

(1) The infinite is not.

(2) Love and wisdom are not.

(3) Consequently life is not.

(4) Light and heat are not.

(5) Even activity itself viewed in itself is not.

But organs receptive of these are creatable and have been created. These statements may be illustrated by the following comparisons:

Light is not creatable, but its organ, the eye, is; sound, which is an activity of the atmosphere, is not creatable, but its organ, the ear, is; neither is heat, which is the primary active principle, for the reception of which all things in the three kingdoms of nature have been created, and according to this reception are acted upon, but do not act.

It is from the order of creation, that wherever there are actives there are also passives, and that these two should join themselves together as a one. If actives were creatable as passives are there would have been no need of the sun, and heat and light from it, but all created things would have permanent existence without these. But if these should be taken away the created universe would lapse into chaos.

The sun itself of this world consists of created substances, the activity of which produces fire. These things are presented for the sake of illustration.

It would be the same with man, if spiritual light, which in its essence is wisdom, and spiritual heat, which in its essence is love, did not flow into man and were not received by him. The entire man is nothing but a form organized to receive light and heat, both from the natural world and from the spiritual world, for these two worlds correspond to each other. If it were denied that man is a form receptive of love and wisdom from God, influx would also be denied, and thus that all good is from God. Conjunction with God would also be denied, and consequently, that man can be an abode and temple of God would be an expression devoid of meaning.

But man does not know this from any light of reason, for that light is obscured by fallacies that arise from the appearances pertaining to the external bodily senses, and that are believed in. Man has no other feeling than that he lives from his own life, because the instrumental feels the principal to be its own, and is unable therefore to distinguish between the principal and the instrumental, for these two causes act together as one cause, according to a theory known in the learned world. The principal cause is life, and the instrumental cause is man's mind. The appearance is also that beasts possess life created within them, but this is a similar fallacy; for beasts are organs created to receive light and heat both from the natural world and from the spiritual world. For each species is a form of some natural love, and receives light and heat from the spirit world mediately through heaven and hell; the gentle beasts through heaven, and the fierce through hell. Man alone receives light and heat, that is, wisdom and love, immediately from the Lord. This is the difference.

That the Lord is Life in Himself, thus Life itself, He teaches in John:

The Word was with God, and God was the Word; in Him was life, and the life was the light of men (John 1:1, 4).

Again:

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

And again:

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).

And again:

He that followeth Me shall have the light of life (John 8:12).

(True Christian Religion 470-474)