Heavenly Joy's Source

As man was created to perform uses, and this is to love the neighbor, so all who come into heaven, however many there are, must do uses. All the delight and blessedness of these is according to uses and to the love of uses. Heavenly joy is from no other source. He who believes that such joy is possible in idleness is much deceived.

No idle person is tolerated even in hell. 

Those who are there are in workhouses and under a judge who imposes tasks on the prisoners that they must do daily. To those who do not do them neither food nor clothing is given, but they stand hungry and naked; thus are they compelled to work there. The difference is that in hell uses are done from fear, but in heaven from love; and fear does not give joy, but love does. Nevertheless it is proper to vary occupations in different ways in company with others, and these serve as recreations, which are also uses.

It has been granted me to see many things in heaven, many things in the world, and many things in the human body, and to consider at the same time their uses; and it has been revealed that every particular thing in them, both great and small, was created from use, in use, and for use; and that the part, in which the ultimate that is for use, ceases is separated as harmful and is cast out as condemned.

(Apocalypse Explained 1194:2 ~ Emanuel Swedenborg)

The Uses Through Which Men and Angels Have Wisdom

To love uses is nothing else than to love the neighbor, for use in the spiritual sense is the neighbor. This can be seen from the fact that everyone loves another not because of his face and body, but from his will and understanding - he loves one who has a good will and a good understanding, and does not love one with a good will and a bad understanding, or with a good understanding and a bad will.  And as a man is loved or not loved for these reasons, it follows that the neighbor is that from which everyone is a man, and that is his spiritual.

Place ten men before your eyes that you may choose one of them to be your associate in any duty or business; will you first find out about them and choose the one who comes nearest to your use? Therefore he is your neighbor, and is loved more than the others. Or become acquainted with ten maidens with the purpose of choosing one of them for your wife; do you not at first ascertain the character of each one, and if she consents betroth to you the one that you love? That one is more your neighbor than the others. If you should say to yourself, "Every man is my neighbor, and is therefore to be loved without distinction," a devil-man and an angel-man or a harlot and a virgin might be equally loved.

Use is the neighbor, because every man is valued and loved not for his will and understanding alone, but for the uses he performs or is able to perform from these. 

Therefore a man of use is a man according to his use; and a man not of use is a man not a man, for of such a man it is said that he is not useful for anything; and although in this world he may be tolerated in a community so long as he lives from what is his own, after death when he becomes a spirit he is cast out into a desert.

Man, therefore, is such as his use is. But uses are manifold; in general they are heavenly or infernal.

• Heavenly uses are those that are serviceable more or less, or more nearly or remotely, to the
church, to the country, to society, and to a fellow-citizen, for the sake of these as ends;

• Infernal uses are those that are serviceable only to the man himself and those dependent on him; and if serviceable to the church, to the country, to society, or to a fellow citizen, it is not for the sake of these as ends, but for the sake of self as the end. And yet everyone ought from love, though not from self-love, to provide the necessaries and requisites of life for himself and those dependent on him.

When man loves uses by doing them in the first place, and loves the world and self in the second place, the former constitutes his spiritual and the latter his natural; and the spiritual rules, and the natural serves. This makes evident what the spiritual is, and what the natural is. This is the meaning of the Lord's words in Matthew:

Seek ye first the kingdom of the heavens and its justice, and all things shall be added unto you (Matt. 6:33).

"The kingdom of the heavens" means the Lord and His church, and "justice" means spiritual, moral, and civil good; and every good that is done from the love of these is a use. Then "all things shall be added," because when use is in the first place, the Lord, from whom is all good, is in the first place and rules, and gives whatever contributes to eternal life and happiness; for, as has been said, all things of the Lord's Divine providence pertaining to man look to what is eternal. "All things that shall be added" refer to food and raiment, because food means everything internal that nourishes the soul, and raiment everything external that like the body clothes it. Everything internal has reference to love and wisdom, and everything external to wealth and eminence.

All this makes clear what is meant by loving uses for the sake of uses, and what the uses are from which man has wisdom, from which and according to which wisdom everyone has eminence and wealth in heaven.

(Apocalypse Explained 1193:2-4) ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

The Love of Knowing Things Hidden - Wonder

Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are His:

And He changeth the times and the seasons: He removeth kings, and setteth up kings: He giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:

He revealeth the deep and secret things: He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.

I thank thee, and praise thee, O thou God of my fathers, who hast given me wisdom and might, and hast made known unto me now what we desired of thee: for thou hast now made known unto us the king's matter.    (Daniel 2:20-23)

That there is an innate love of being wise, this we perceive from the love of knowing things hidden, a love familiar to every one, it being this love that forms our whole intellect; for, in the case of an infant and child, all the things that are impressed on its memory had previously been hidden from it; but when they are impressed, it is at once seized with the eager desire to find out what lies still further hidden in that which is known, to wit, its qualities and much else.

This love rushes us into the sciences whereby we are persuaded we shall arrive at a knowledge of things hidden.

The whole learned world rushes to physical experiments in order that from these we may acquire wisdom, that is, may penetrate into the secrets of nature. The ancient philosophers were wholly carried off by this love; but they wished to penetrate into the secrets of nature a priori, that is, by means of principles and rational philosophy, while the philosophers of our day wish to do this a posteriori, that is, by means of experience. Both have the same love, for they concur as to the end in view.

Who does not desire that nature shall be seen in her inmost recesses and unveiled? Who does not desire to know what the soul is? where it resides? what will be its nature after death? what the highest good is. Who does not desire to know the inner contents of another's mind? the secrets of his own companions, of society, of kingdoms? Who is there that is not delighted when with telescopes he beholds the moon, a planet and its satellites? that does not wish to know whether there are inhabitants there, and how the planets pursue their daily and annual motions in this great vortex? Who does not love to discover by microscopes nature's tiniest objects, and insects invisible to the eye? not to mention an infinitude of other things which show that this love is implanted in the human mind, a love which is also the principle of becoming wise, and the efficient cause of the formation of our intellect; and, being this, is present within us before the formation, though we do not perceive its presence save by judging from its effect. It follows that it flows in from a superior mind within us - a mind whose property it is to know and understand all things universally, and to wish to communicate this its property to an inferior mind, whereby it may present itself in its body.

Wonder is the affection produced by all perfection as related to the subject thereof. We wonder at wisdom in a child, but not in an old man; at intellect in an insane man; at the analogue of virtue in a brute animal. So long as we know little or nothing concerning the object of our wonder, we wonder at its perfection, even though this be slight. Thus we wonder at the marvels of nature, which are infinite in number, at her hidden forms, and other like things. Therefore, little children wonder at all things, because to them what lies beneath is occult. This wonder, therefore, coincides with the love of knowing things hidden; for what we wonder at, that same is deeply fixed in our memory.

We wonder that nature in her kingdoms is so marvelous, but if we knew what she herself is, and that she is supremely perfect and can produce nothing else than marvels, we would cease to wonder.

We wonder at the miracles of God, and the proofs of His Providence, because we do not comprehend that He is Infinite, and His perfection infinite. Were we to perceive this, we would feel nothing of amazement but only veneration and adoration, thinking that what we comprehend with our mind is a minimum, and that there is an infinitude of things which surpass our understanding. He is most deeply hidden and unsearchable by any mind, that He may be the God whom, from His universe and the marvels of nature, we may wonderingly admire and adore. Who would God be were He not inscrutable?

(Pre-Revelatory work, Rational Psychology ~ Emanuel Swedenborg 319-320)

Love Produces by Wisdom

Selection from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Love as a bridegroom and husband produces or begets all forms, yet only by wisdom as a bride and wife, can be proved by things innumerable in both the spiritual world and in the natural world, provided only it is kept in mind that the entire angelic heaven is arranged in its form, and kept in it, from the Divine love through the Divine wisdom.

Those who deduce the creation of the world from any other source than the Divine love through the Divine wisdom, not knowing that these two constitute the Divine Essence, descend from reason's sight to eyesight, and bestow kisses on nature as the creator of the universe; and thereby conceive chimeras* and bring forth specters*. They devise fallacies, and reason from them; and their conclusions are eggs that contain birds of night.

Such should not be called minds, but eyes and ears without understanding, or thoughts without soul. They talk of colors as if these existed without light; of trees as if they existed without seed; and of all things in the world as existing without the sun; for they make derivatives to be first principles and things caused to be causes; thus they turn all things upside down, lull their reason to sleep, and the things they see are dreams.

(True Christian Religion 37:3)

* chimera
(1.) (in Greek mythology) a fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
(2.) a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.

* specters
a ghost. Something widely feared as a possible unpleasant or dangerous occurrence.

Knowing Love in Its Essence

Selection from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

God is Love itself and Wisdom itself, and these two constitute His Essence. 

In the earliest ages it was seen that love and wisdom are the two essentials to which all the infinite things that are in God and proceed from God have reference. 

But succeeding ages, as they withdrew their minds from heaven and immersed them in things worldly and corporeal, gradually became unable to see this - for they gradually ceased to know what love is in its essence, and thus what wisdom is in its essence, not knowing that love abstracted from a form is impossible, and that love operates in a form and through a form. 

. . . God is the Itself and the Only, and thus the first substance and form, the essence of which is love and wisdom.

. . . From Him were made all things that were made, it follows that He created the universe with each thing and all things of it from love by means of wisdom; consequently the Divine love, together with the Divine wisdom, is in each and all created subjects. 

Love, moreover, is not merely the essence that forms all things, it is also that which unites and conjoins them, and thus, when they are formed, holds them in connection. 

(True Christian Religion 37:1)

Three Things That Are The Lord

Selection from Divine Love and Wisdom ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

There are in the Lord three things that are the Lord - the Divine of love, the Divine of wisdom, and the Divine of use

These three are presented in appearance outside of the sun of the spiritual world - the Divine of love by heat, the Divine of wisdom by light and the Divine of use by the atmosphere which is their containant.

(Divine Love and Wisdom 296)

Accommodation of the Infinite to the Finite

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

. . . between Divine good and Divine truth there is this distinction: that Divine good is in the Lord, and Divine truth is from the Lord. It is as with the fire of the sun and the light which is therefrom; the fire is in the sun, and the light is from the sun; in the light there is not fire but heat.

Moreover, in the other life the Lord is the Sun, and also is the light. In the Sun there, which is Himself, is Divine fire, which is the Divine good of the Divine love. From that Sun is Divine light, which is Divine truth from Divine good. In this Divine truth, there is also Divine good, but not such as is in the Sun, it being accommodated to reception in heaven; for unless it were accommodated to reception, heaven could not have come into existence, because no angel can bear the flame from the Divine love. He would be consumed in a moment, as would a man if the flame of the sun of this world should blow directly upon him.

But how the Divine good of the Lord's Divine love is accommodated to reception, cannot be known by anyone, not even by the angels in heaven, because it is an accommodation of the Infinite to the finite; and the Infinite is such as to transcend all the understanding of the finite, insomuch that when the understanding of the finite desires to look in that direction, it falls as into the depth of the sea and perishes.

(Arcana Coelestia 8644)