DISCUSSION:
Continuing Life; The Spiritual World
THIS IS ANOTHER CHAPTER IN WHICH THE
VOCABULARY of my discussion requires some explanation. As in Chapter 1, I deliberately
depart from the most direct translation of Swedenborg, and
from common modern usage as well, when I write of
"continuing life" instead of "life after death." The reason
for the variation is that I feel more comfortable about
explaining what I don't mean by "life after death." The
necessity for making that latter explanation, if I use those
terms, was first pointed out (as far as I know) by Paul
Tillich.
"People who talk about 'life after death,"'
I heard him say in a sermon in Harvard Chapel in the early
1960s, "either don't mean 'life' or they don't mean
'death.'" Now, Tillich's basic beliefs on this point evolved
through several stages and are too complex and debatable to
be detailed here, but his logic is formidable. For two or
three years after that sermon, I tried to find a reasonable
justification for using the familiar phrase, "life after
death," but I finally surrendered and have not been able to
use it comfortably for a long time. Death, by definition, is
the end of life; so what I mean when I use the word now (as
in Chapter 9), is not precisely what the words say. The
human soul, which continues to live after the body dies,
does not die; its continuing life is not life after its
death. "Continuing life" is better, perhaps. Just as good,
and maybe better still, is the title that Dr. Raymond Moody
gave his bestselling book, Life After Life!
I am fond of word games like this but I'm
not telling the tale of my struggle with Tillich's thought
just for fun. I tell it here to illustrate that devoted
belief is not a license for loose language or fuzzy
thinking. The fact that a human being's spirit continues to
live after it ceases to be clothed with its material body
does not need defense by blind belief, nor is it threatened
by hard questions or sharp inquiry. You don't have to
believe in cancer to have your body suffer and die from it,
and you do not have to believe in spiritual life to live it
with or without a physical body. I'm sure Tillich
understands that clearly now. Raymond Moody, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Carl G. Jung and many others have accepted the
fact as part of a thoroughly informed and competent
worldview. On Swedenborg's testimony, it can be taken as
visible, tangible fact.
Of course, I do not expect to have to
convince you of the idea of continuing life, since you have
stayed with this course this far. But there may be a need to
sharpen your conception of what that idea is. For example,
what is it that continues to live? It cannot be the human
being, because we began by defining that as a spirit clothed
with a body. When the body dies, it is not living anymore
(as Tillich correctly observed).
What does survive? A formless vapor? No. The
body which clothes the spirit in human life is shaped from
its organic conception to fit the form of its spirit, and
that spirit (called a "soul" while it still is clothed with
a body) develops and matures in closely correspondential
symbiosis with its body. This spiritual substance, which
continues to live, has so much in common with the appearance
of its body that people who knew each other in physical life
immediately recognize each other when they meet in spiritual
life. The spirit's form, features, posture, and other
distinguishing characteristics are just as individualized
and recognizable as the comparable characteristics of the
body that grew as a correspondential reflection of the
spirit it clothed.
Does that suggest that the body's death is
of little or no significance in the life of the spirit? It
should not suggest that, because a spirit no longer clothed
with a body is no longer a human being. So we are back where
we started in this course, but needing now a sharper
conception of the relationship between a human spirit and
its body.
The body serves the soul much as tools serve
the body. It is obvious that tools are lifeless and impotent
on their own: hammers do not drive nails, saws do not cut
wood, but a human being whose body holds tools can cut and
fasten wood into a box or a house. It is just as obvious
that a body can do things with tools that it could not do
without them. Without tools, the most experienced carpenter,
the most skilled cabinet-maker, couldn't even make a simple
box out of a tree! For very similar reasons, a soul could
not develop a character—most specifically, it could not
develop a ruling love in its life—without a body. The soul
uses the body to meet the temptations of the spiritual world
and to actualize its intentions.
A person's chief, central, dominant,
overriding life's love is developed in the tensions between
the spirit and the body. Temptations, described in Chapter
3, are tensions between spiritual and physical desires and
goals. Reformation, described in Chapter 4, involves
completing faith in concrete actions that benefit the
neighbor. Regeneration, and the consequent life of charity
(Chapters 4 and 6), involve transforming spiritual
intention into physical acts that are good for someone—acts
of use. The life's love that is molded and built out of
those tensions and opportunities develops strength and
definition continuously throughout human life (that is,
throughout a whole, physio-spiritual life). After death, the
spirit no longer has a body to use in its
character-building. Without the tensions and opportunities
that the body provides, the life's love stops growing.
Forever. The death of the body is of enormous significance
to the soul. Spiritual development stops.
This fact is stated and explained in
Heaven and Hell 480. Those
who find it harshly rigid often are those who do not take
seriously the essential role that the body plays in human
life. A human being certainly is a spirit as to internals (Heaven and Hell 461 ff.), but as to the wholeness of human life, a human
being is a single two-fold reality that cannot be reduced to
less than a "spirit-clothed-with-a-body." (I have explored
this physio-spiritual wholeness of life in a pamphlet,
The Oneness of Things.)
The spiritual world, as described in
Heaven and Hell, and
elsewhere in Swedenborg's works, is distinctive in the
history of Christian thought in at least two respects. The
first is the difference between his factual reporting of
what he heard and saw and touched in countless experiences,
and all the metaphysical speculations and artistic
imaginings of other people that have been formed by—and have
helped to form—the Christian tradition. The second
distinction is related to the first: Swedenborg's account is
characterized by a vast wealth of detail. There is detail in
the paintings and etchings of Hieronymous Bosch and William
Blake and in the poetry of Milton and Dante (and still more
in the art of Dante's illustrators!), but that is
imaginative detail rather than factual. The Christian
tradition before Swedenborg is notably vague about what the
spiritual world is really like (some branches of that
tradition have grown more and more vague since the
eighteenth century). But even the sharpest critics of
Swedenborg never accused him of being vague about the
spiritual world!
Swedenborg's wealth of detail makes his conception of the
spiritual world impossible to summarize because the
substance of the concept is in the details. However, there
are two points that are important as a general framework for
assembling the details.
The first of these points is the idea of the
three great divisions of the spiritual world: heaven, hell,
and the world of spirits. "The world of spirits" is not a
synonym for "the spiritual world" but is a technical term
that Swedenborg uses to describe a particular condition or
state of being (in the spiritual world, conditions or states
are areas or regions). The world of spirits has no direct
parallel in traditional Christian literature (though it has
parallels in many personal visions of life after life, and
may have some in works like the Egyptian and Tibetan books
of the dead). Its superficial similarities to the idea of
purgatory may be misleading: the world of spirits is between
heaven and hell as purgatory is, but everyone passes through
it, none are sentenced to it, and it is not a place of
punishment.
In fact, no one in the spiritual world is
sentenced to anything. As the full consciousness of
spiritual life unfolds after the body's death, all the
pretenses that enabled us to fool others (and even
ourselves) fall away. A person's true character and the
chief love that governs it become evident. Among companions
of a seriously different character, a spirit finds it
difficult to work or converse with them, even uncomfortable
to be near them. If the difference is great enough, the
discomfort is as frantic as that of a fish out of water. By
such experiences, and with as much help and guidance as he
or she seeks or accepts, the spirit moves through the world
of spirits and eventually out of it into a community that
feels "right," like home. In fact, it is the home that we
made for ourselves during the character-building experiences
of human life. This is where we feel best, not where we are
assigned as a reward or as punishment, whether it is heaven
or hell.
The heavens and the hells are made of many
communities, each separated from others by the particular
nature of the ruling loves of its inhabitants. Similar
communities are close together, others are far away. In life
as we know it, we feel close to some people in another city
or another continent, and distant from some people in the
same room with us. In the spiritual world, the physical
distances do not exist and distance is simply difference.
The differences are three-dimensional, so some communities
are higher (more central) than others, and directions (like
the points of our compass) are differences of good or evil,
truth or falsity. The descriptions of distances, directions,
and elevations are vivid and easily grasped; but don't try
to make them fit one literal, global image. These are
spiritual dimensions and directions and they change in
different contexts. The changes that seem natural in dreams
but incredible in waking life may be the best illustrations
of the shifts in surroundings, companionship, and
perspectives that characterize the spiritual world.
These are the main generalizations that I
want to make about the spiritual world. There is one more
point that is not central to me, but it is for many. The
issue usually is called "the eternity of the hells," but
generally refers to the eternity of one's abode there. In
Heaven and Hell 480 (and
Secrets of Heaven
10749,
True Christianity 399, and several other passages),
Swedenborg says that the hells are eternal and everyone who
joins them stays there eternally.
CHAPTER 9 ASSIGNMENTS
Read the following passages from Swedenborg.
For further reading in other published versions, see the
passages listed just below:
Heaven and Hell 1-77,
421-422, 426, 453, 461, 462, 480, 512, 515, 528, 530, 545-550
PASSAGES FROM SWEDENBORG:
Continuing Life; The Spiritual World
HH 2
First of all, we need to know who is the God
of heaven, because everything depends on this. Throughout
the entire heaven, only the Lord is recognized as God, no
one else.[12.
Notes] Angels say what the Lord taught: namely, that he
is one with the Father, that the Father is in him and he in
the Father, that anyone who sees him sees the Father, and
that everything holy comes from him (John 10:30, 38;
14:9-11; 16:13-15)....
People in heaven speak directly from their
thinking—a kind of thought-filled speech, or vocal
thinking—so that if people have divided the Divine into
three in the world (and conceived each in a separate image
without gathering and focusing these three into one) they
cannot be accepted into heaven. The way all thoughts are
communicated in heaven, people who arrive thinking "three"
and saying "one" are identified immediately and
expelled.[13.
Notes]....
HH 3
People in the church who have ignored the
Lord, recognized only the Father and closed their minds to
other thoughts, are outside heaven. Since they do not
receive anything flowing in from heaven (where the Lord
alone is worshipped), they gradually lose their ability to
consider true ideas and eventually become either speechless
or inarticulate.... People who have denied the Lord's divine
nature and focused only on his human nature (like the
Socinians[14.
Notes]) also are excluded from heaven.... [as are]
people who claim to believe in an invisible divine being
they call Universal Being, and therefore reject any faith in
the Lord[15.
Notes].... It is different for people who are born
outside the church, people we call non-Christians.[16.
Notes]
It is the Lord's Divine Nature that
makes Heaven
HH 7
The whole assembly of angels is called
heaven because heaven is made up of angels; but heaven is
heaven—as a whole, and in every detail—because of the divine
nature that emanates from the Lord. The divine nature
emanating from the Lord is the good intrinsic to love and
the truth intrinsic to faith. The extent to which angels
accept from the Lord what is good and what is true
determines the extent to which they are angels and the
extent to which, together, they are heaven....This is
why in heaven the Word is called the Lord's dwelling and his
throne, and why people who live there are described as being
in the Lord."...
The Lord's Divine Nature in Heaven is
Everyone's Love for Him and Care for the Neighbor
HH 13
In heaven, divine nature emanating from the
Lord is called divine truth....and it flows into heaven
from the Lord, out of his divine love. Divine love and
divine truth derived from it are like the sun's fire and the
light that comes from it in our world....
HH 14
The divine in heaven (which, in fact, makes
heaven) is love because that love is spiritual union. It
unites angels to the Lord and unites them with each other so
deeply that in the Lord's sight they are a single being.
Beyond this, love is the essential reality of every
individual life—so it is the source of life of angels as
well as of each of us. We are warmed by its presence and
chilled by its absence, we die when it is completely gone...and its quality determines the quality of our life.
HH 15
There are two distinctly different loves in
heaven, love to the Lord and love for the neighbor. Love to
the Lord characterizes the third or central heaven, and love
for the neighbor characterizes the second or intermediate
heaven....In heaven's light, it is easy to see how these
loves differ and how they unite; in our world it can be seen
only dimly. In heaven, "loving the Lord" does not mean
loving our idea of who he is, but loving what is good—what
comes from him ("loving what is good" means doing good
because we love it. "Loving the neighbor" does not mean
loving what we like about the neighbor; it means loving what
is true—what comes from the Word ("loving what is true"
means doing it)....This will not fit into the thinking
of anyone who does not know what constitutes "love," "what
is good," or "the neighbor."
HH 16
... We demonstrate our love for someone by
intending and doing what they want.... Also, "good" from the
Lord is his own likeness (for he is within it). When we do
what is good and true intentionally, we make goodness and
truth part of our lives—"intending" to do something is
loving to do it. In this way we become likenesses of him and
become united to him... [as] the Lord teaches in the Word
when he says, If you have my commandments and do them,
you are one who loves me, and I will love you and make my
home with you (John 14:21, 23); and again, If you keep my
commandments, you will abide in my love (John 15:10,
12).
HH 17
All my experience in heaven testifies that
divine qualities emanating from the Lord influence the
angels and make heaven what it is. All the angels are forms
of loving and caring—indescribably beautiful, with love
radiating from their faces, their speech and from every
aspect of their behavior.... Every angel and every
spirit is enveloped in an aura of spiritual life. By means
of these auras, their affections and loves can be identified
even from a distance.
Heaven is Divided Into Two Kingdoms
HH 20
There are infinite varieties in heaven....so
it is divided overall into two kingdoms. More specifically,
it is divided into three heavens. In detail, it is divided
into countless communities.... Angels who accept divine
emanations from the Lord ... on a deeper level are called
heavenly angels, and those who accept them less deeply are
called spiritual angels. Therefore, heaven is divided into
two kingdoms, one called the heavenly kingdom and another
called the spiritual kingdom....
HH 27
There is such a difference between angels of
the heavenly kingdom and the spiritual kingdom that they do
not live together or associate with one another. They are
able to communicate only through intermediate communities
(called "heavenly-spiritual" communities), and the heavenly
kingdom flows into the spiritual kingdom through them.
Consequently, while heaven is divided into two kingdoms, it
is a single whole.
There Are Three Heavens
HH 29
...There is a central or third heaven, an
intermediate or second one, and an external or first
heaven....
HH 30
....The deeper levels of the human mind and
sensory consciousness are in a similar pattern: we have a
central, intermediate and external nature. This is because
humanity was created with the entire divine design gathered
into it—so much so that the structure of a human being is
the divine design, a miniature image of heaven. That is why
our interior minds are able to communicate with heaven and
why we come into the company of angels after we die—angels
of the central, intermediate, or external heaven according
to our acceptance of divine "goods" and divine "truths"
while we lived in the world.
HH 32
There is an inside and an outside to each
heaven. Angels in the inner part are called "inner angels,"
while those in the outer part are called "outer angels." The
inside and the outside of the heavens—or of each specific
heaven—are like the parts of us that intend and think. Every
intention includes a thought: neither occurs without the
other. The intending is like a flame, and the thinking is
like the light it sheds.
HH 33
It should be clear that what is inside
angels determines what heaven they are in. The more their
deeper levels have been opened, the more inward the heaven
they are in. Every angel—like each of us—has three levels.
Those whose third level has been opened are in the central
heaven, while those whose intermediate level (or only their
first) has been opened are in the intermediate or outside
heaven.
Deeper levels are opened by our acceptance
of God's gifts of what is good and true. Those who let
themselves be changed by divine true gifts and let those
gifts directly into their lives—into their intentions and,
therefore, into what they do—are in the central [inmost
("highest")] or third heaven, where they are situated
according to their acceptance of what is good in their
feelings about what is true. Others, who let such gifts into
their memory and then into their thinking, intending and
doing them as a result of this process (instead of accepting
them directly into their intentions), are in the
intermediate or second heaven. People who lead good and
moral lives, believing in the Divine without caring much
about theology, are in the outside, or first, heaven....
HH 37
Even though the heavens are so distinct from
each other that angels of one heaven cannot have regular
dealings with another, the Lord does join all the heavens
together by means of direct and indirect influence. His
direct influence affects all the heavens, but his indirect
influence affects one heaven through another. By this
combined influence, the Lord effects a unity of the three
heavens, linking them all together, from the first to the
last, so that there is nothing that is not connected.
Anything not connected with the First [as in "First Cause"]
by some intermediate stream of influence, does not endure:
it dissipates and becomes nothing.
The Heavens Consist of Countless
Communities
HH 41
In each heaven, angels are not all together
in one place. They are separated into larger and smaller
communities on the basis of different kinds of good that
they love and their faith leads them to practice. Angels
doing similar good work make up one community. Good
activities in heaven are infinitely various and each
individual angel is, as it were, his own good work.
HH 42
Distances between communities also vary
according to the difference between their activities,
generally and specifically, because the only cause of
distance in the spiritual world is difference between inner
conditions. In the heavens, that means differences between
kinds of love. When communities are very different, the
distance between them is great; when the difference is
slight, the distance is short. To be similar is to be close.
HH 43
All individuals in each community are
separated from each other according to the same principle.
The more perfect ones—those who stand out as good (and
therefore as loving, wise, and understanding)—are in the
center. Those who are less outstanding surround them at
distances proportionate to their lesser perfection....
HH 44
It is as if kindred souls gravitate toward
each other spontaneously. When they are together they feel
as though they are with their own family at home; while with
others they feel like foreigners, as if they were abroad.
When they are with others like themselves, they are most
free, enjoying life to the fullest.
Each Community is Heaven in a Smaller
Form and Each Angel is Heaven in the Smallest Form
HH 51
Each community is a smaller form of heaven
and each angel is the smallest form of heaven. Each embodies
the activities of love and faith that constitute heaven.
This good activity occurs in every community of heaven and
every angel of heaven participates. It is irrelevant that
this activity is different and distinctive everywhere: it is
the activity of heaven nevertheless. The only difference is
that heaven is organized so that there is one activity here
and another there....It is similar to officials,
functionaries and servants in a royal palace or court: they
live individually in the palace or court, but each performs
a particular function in the service of the king. This shows
the meaning of the Lord's saying that "in my Father's house
there are many dwellings" (John 14:2), and by the "stories
of heaven" and the "heaven of heavens" in the Prophets
[e.g., Amos 9:6, Nehemiah 9:6]....
HH 53
Just as a whole community is heaven in a
lesser form, an angel is heaven in the least form. Heaven is
not outside angels but within them: their deepest levels—the
levels of their minds—are arranged in the form of heaven.
That means they are arranged to accept all the elements of
heaven that are outside themselves. They accept these
elements according to the quality of goodness that is in
them from the Lord. This is why an angel is also a heaven.
HH 54
It never can be said that heaven is outside
anyone: it is within because, in keeping with the heaven
that is within them, all angels accept the heaven that is
outside them into themselves. So we can see the error of
people who believe that getting into heaven is simply a
matter of being taken up among the angels without regard for
the quality of their inner life—those who believe that
heaven is granted on the basis of the Lord's unmitigated
mercy. Unless heaven is within you, nothing of the heaven
outside you flows in or is accepted.
Many spirits holding this opinion have been
taken up into heaven because of their faith; but once they
arrived, they began to be blinded in their discernment
(since their inner life was contrary to that of angels).
They began to act like idiots and their intentionality
became so tortured that they behaved like lunatics. In
short, people who have lived evil lives and arrive in heaven
bring their souls with them; they are as tormented as fish
out of water, breathing air....
HH 56
Heaven is where the Lord is recognized,
trusted and loved. The various forms by which he is
worshipped—a variety stemming from the variety of good
activities from one community to another—result in an
advantage rather than a loss, because they are a source of
heaven's perfection.
Every perfect whole arises from a variety of elements, for a
whole that does not embody a variety has no quality, has no
form, is not anything. However, a whole arising from a
variety of elements—if the various elements are in perfect
form, as when each associates with the next in the series
like a familiar friend—has a perfect quality. Heaven,
therefore, is a whole composed of a variety of elements
arranged in perfect form; heaven is the most perfect form of
all forms....
HH 57
We can say the same of the church as we have
of heaven, since the church is the Lord's heaven on earth.
It, too, has many components, yet each is called a church.
Each is a church to the extent that love's actions and
faith's understanding rule there. The Lord forms a single
church out of many churches. What we said about the church
in general, we can say of an individual member of a church:
the church is within and not outside, and that anyone in
whom the Lord is present in good actions from love, and good
understanding from faith, is a church....
Heaven, Considered as a Whole,
Reflects a Single Individual
HH 59
There is a secret, well known in heaven but
not yet known in this world: heaven—contemplated in a
single, all-inclusive concept—reflects a single individual....Angels, knowing that all the heavens, like their
communities, reflect a single individual, refer to heaven as
The Universal and Divine Human—"divine" because the Lord's
divine nature constitutes heaven. [See HH 7 in the
text above.][17.
Notes]
Each Community in Heaven Reflects a
Single Individual
HH 69
I have been allowed to see on several
occasions that each community of heaven reflects a single
individual and also is in the likeness of a single human
being...and a single entity in human form when the Lord
makes himself present.
....You need to realize that even though all the individuals
in a single community of heaven look like a single human
being when they all are together, still one community is not
the same person as any other. They can be differentiated
from each other as members of a family are
distinguishable... because they differ according to the
various good activities they participate in, activities
which give them their form. Communities in the central or
highest heaven—especially those at its very center—appear in
the most perfect and beautiful human form.
HH 71
It is worth noting that the more members
there are in a single community of heaven, the more united
they are in action and the more perfect their human form
is....The number of members in every community in heaven is
growing daily; the more it grows, the more perfect it
becomes. In this way, the community is perfected. Not only
that, heaven in general is perfected since the communities
constitute heaven.
Since heaven is perfected by numerical growth, we can see
how mistaken people are who believe that heaven will be
closed to prevent overcrowding. Actually, it is just the
reverse. It never will be closed and its ever-increasing
fullness makes it more perfect. So angels long for nothing
more than to have new angel novices arrive there.
Therefore Every Angel is in Perfect
Human Form
HH 73
In the two preceding chapters, I have
explained that heaven as a whole reflects a single
individual. This applies to each individual in heaven. It
follows from the sequence of reasons presented there, that
every single angel reflects the same. Just as heaven is a
person in greatest form, and a community of heaven is a
person in lesser form, so an angel is a person in least
form. The most perfect form—such as the form of heaven—is a
likeness of the whole in each part and a likeness of each
part in the whole. The reason for this is that heaven is a
commonwealth: in fact, it shares everything it has with each
individual, and individuals receive everything they have
from the commonwealth....To the extent that they accept
heaven, people here and now are receptacles; they are
heavens and they are angels.[18.
Notes]
What the World of Spirits Is
HH 421
The world of spirits is not heaven, nor is
it hell, but a place or condition between the two. It is
where we first arrive after death and from which (in due
time) we either are raised into heaven or cast into hell,
depending on our life in this world.[19.
Notes]
HH 422
The world of spirits is a place halfway
between heaven and hell and it is also our own halfway
condition after death. The hells are beneath it and heaven
is above it, so it appeared to me to be halfway between
them. As long as we are in it, we are not in heaven or in
hell, so it is a halfway condition.
A condition of heaven for us is the union of
what is good and what is true within us; a condition of hell
is a union of what is evil and what is false. When the good
in a spirit-person is united with the true, then that
individual arrives in heaven because—as already stated—that
union is heaven within us. On the other hand, when our evil
is united to the false within us, we arrive in hell, for
that union is hell within us. The process of uniting occurs
in the world of spirits, because there we are in a halfway
condition....
HH 426
There is an immense number of spirits in the
world of spirits, because everyone is first gathered there
to be examined and prepared. There is no fixed limit to our
stay there. Some people barely enter it and promptly are
taken up into heaven or cast down into hell. Some stay there
for a few weeks and some for several years, but not more
than thirty years. The variations in length of stay occur
because of the correspondence (or lack of correspondence)
between our deeper and more superficial selves....
After Death, We Are in Complete Human
Form
HH 453
A spiritual person has a human form, or a
spirit is human as far as form is concerned.
[2] This may be clearer from the fact that we are human
because of our spirit, not because of our body; our physical
form is added to our spirit, fitting the spirit's form. It
is not the other way around, since a spirit is clothed with
a body that suits its form. Therefore, the spirit acts on
our body's individual parts—even the smallest ones—to the
point that any part not being activated by our spirit—or
with which our spirit is not involved—is not alive.
[3] We cannot see the human form of spirits after they have
left their bodies, nor see them in other living persons,
because our organs of vision (our eyes) are material. They
see in this world; what is material sees only matter and
what is spiritual sees only spirit. When the physical eye is
covered over and loses connection with spirit, then the
spiritual world becomes visible [through spiritual eyes] in
its own form, which is a human form—not only for spirits who
are in the spiritual world, but also for spirits in people
we meet while they are still in their bodies....
After Death, We Enjoy Every Sense,
Memory, Thought, and Affection We Had in the World: We Leave
Nothing Behind Except Our Earthly Body
HH 461
When we move from the natural world into the
spiritual, which happens when we die, we take with us
everything related to our character except our earthly body.
Repeated experience has shown me this. In fact, when we
enter the spiritual world (our life after death), we are in
a body as we were in this world. There appears to be no
difference, since we do not feel or see any difference.
However, this body is spiritual, separated and purified from
earthly matter. Further, when something spiritual touches
and sees something spiritual, it is just like something
natural touching and seeing something natural. So when we
have become a spirit, we have no sense that we are not in
the body we inhabited in the world and may be unaware we
have died....
HH 462
However, there is considerable difference
between our life in the spiritual world and our life in the
natural world, regarding both our outer senses and the way
they affect us, and our inner senses and the way they affect
us. Those in heaven have far more exquisite senses, that is,
they see and hear more precisely and also think more wisely
than they could in this world....The difference between
their outer sense there and here is like the difference
between something clear and something hidden by a cloud, or
like noonday light and the dimness of evening....Their
hearing is similarly responsive to their perception (which
is a function of both discernment and volition), so they
detect the slightest shadings of speakers' affections and
thoughts in their tone and words, shadings of affection in
their tone and shadings of thought in their words....
HH 480
A great deal of experience has convinced me
that after death we remain the same forever in regard to
our volition, our dominant love. I have been allowed to
talk with some people who lived more than two thousand years
ago (people whose lives are described in history books and
are, therefore, familiar). They are still the same, just as
described, including the love that was the source and
determinant of their lives.... Angels have told me that the
dominant love of our life never changes for anyone to all
eternity because we are our love. To change it in any spirit
would be to take away—snuff out—that spirit's life.
They have told me that this is because after
death we can no longer be reformed by being taught as we can
in this world, since our outmost level is then dormant
(along with the natural insights and affections which
constitute it), and it cannot be opened because it is not
spiritual.... The deeper functions of our mind or spirit
rest on this level the way a house rests on its foundation,
which is why we maintain forever the life of our love in
this world. Angels are utterly amazed that people do not
realize that our nature is determined by the nature of our
dominant love. Many people actually believe they can be
saved by instantaneous mercy (simply on the basis of their
faith alone), regardless of the kind of life they had lived,
not realizing that divine mercy operates through means....
HH 512
Our third state after death,[20.
Notes] or the third
state of our spirits, is one of instruction. This state is
for those who are entering heaven and becoming angels. It is
not, however, for those who are entering hell: they cannot
be taught....
[2] But the good are brought from their second state into a
third (one of instruction). Indeed, no one can be prepared
for heaven without really knowing what is good and true—that
is, only by instruction. Without being taught, no one is
able to know what is good and true spiritually, or what is
bad and wrong opposing them. In the world, we can know what
is good civilly and morally—what is fair and honest—because
there are civil laws that teach what is fair, and community
standards by which we learn what is moral—all dealing with
what is honest and equitable.
What is good and true spiritually, however,
is not learned from the world, but from heaven. It is
possible to learn from the Word (or from the church's
teachings which are drawn from the Word), but such learning
cannot flow into our living unless the deeper levels of our
minds are in heaven... as when we recognize the Divine, and
at the same time act fairly and honestly because of the
Divine (that is, not primarily for the sake of ourselves or
the world).
[3] However, no one is able to behave like this without
first being taught things like the fact that God is, that
there is a heaven and a hell and a life after death, that we
are to love God above everything else and love our neighbor
as ourselves, and that we are to believe what is said in the
Word because the Word is divine.... So we can see that what
is good and true spiritually cannot be learned from the
world but from heaven, and that no one can be prepared for
heaven except by instruction....
HH 515
Not everyone is taught in the same way or by
the same heavenly communities. Those who have been raised in
heaven from infancy—and have not absorbed wrong ideas from
distortions of religion or befouled their spiritual life
with impurities drawn from rank and wealth in the world—are
taught by angels of the inner heavens. Most people, after
dying in adulthood, are taught by angels of the outmost
heaven because these are better adapted to them than angels
of inner heavens (who focus on deeper wisdom than neophyte
spirits can accept so soon after their worldly life).
Muslims, however, are taught by angels who once followed
that religion but had converted to Christianity. Other
non-Christians, too, are taught by their own angels.
It Is Not as Hard to Lead a
Heaven-bound Life as People Think It Is
HH 528
Some people believe that leading a
heaven-bound life (which is called a spiritual life) is
difficult. That is because they have heard that they should
renounce the world, surrender all the desires attributed to
the body, and "live spiritually." They think this can only
mean spurning worldly interests (especially about money and
prestige), going around in constant meditation on God,
salvation and eternal life, and devoting their lives to
prayer and to reading the Word and religious literature.
They think this is renouncing the world and living for the
spirit and not for the flesh.
However, I have learned from an abundance of
experience and conversation with angels that the situation
is entirely different. People who renounce the world and
live for the spirit in this way set up a mournful life for
themselves—a life not open to heavenly joy (since our life
remains with us). But if we would accept heaven's life, we
must by all means live in the world and participate in its
duties and affairs. This is how we accept a spiritual life
by means of our moral and civic life—and there is no other
way a spiritual life can be formed within us, no other way
our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because
living an inner life without a simultaneous outer life is
like living in a house that has no foundation: it either
settles, developing gaping cracks, or totters until it
collapses.
HH 530
Who cannot lead a civil and moral
life?... We do in fact lead this kind of life whether we
are bad or good, since no one wants to be called dishonest
or unfair. Almost everyone practices honesty and fairness
outwardly, even to the point of seeming to be genuinely
honest and fair, seeming to act from genuine honesty and
fairness. Spiritual people have to live in much the same way
and can do so just as easily as natural people; with the
difference that spiritual people believe in the Divine Being
and act honestly and fairly because it follows divine laws
(not only because it follows civil and moral laws).
Spiritual people are able to communicate with heaven's
angels when they are thinking about divine principles in all
their actions. To the extent that they do so, they are
united with those angels. This allows their internal selves
to be opened [even while still on earth].... This enables us
to begin understanding that spiritual people can behave much
the same as natural people do in their civil and moral life,
provided they are united to the Deity in their inner person,
that is, in their intending and thinking.
The Lord Does Not Cast Anyone Into
Hell: Spirits Cast Themselves In
HH 545
Some people hold a strong opinion that God turns his face away from
[certain] people, rejects them from his presence, casts them into hell,
and is angry against them because of their evil. Some even go so far as
to think that God punishes people and does them harm. They support this
idea from the literal meaning of the Word where things like this are
said, not realizing that the spiritual meaning of the Word (which opens
up the literal meaning) is entirely different. The real doctrine of the
church, drawn from the spiritual meaning of the Word, teaches otherwise.
It teaches that the Lord never turns his face away from anyone, never
rejects anyone, never casts anyone into hell, never is angry.
HH 547
... We do evil from hell and good from the Lord, but we believe that
whatever we do comes from ourselves, so the evil we do clings to us as
though it were our own. This is why we are at fault for our evil, never
the Lord. The evil within us is hell within us (it makes no difference
whether you say "evil" or "hell"). Since we are at fault for our evil,
it is we—not the Lord—who leads us into hell. Far from leading us into
hell, the Lord frees us from hell to the extent that we do not intend
evil nor love being absorbed by our evil. (See Heaven and Hell 480
above.) People who intend and love evil in the world intend and love
evil in the other life: they no longer allow themselves to be led away
from it. This is why people who are absorbed in evil are connected to
hell and actually are there in spirit; after death they crave above all
to be where their evil is. Therefore, it is we—not the Lord—who cast
ourselves into hell after death.
EXTENDED READINGS FOR CHAPTER NINE:
HEAVEN AND HELL 1-77, 421-422, 426, 453, 4624, 480, 512, 515, 528, 545-550.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER NINE:
How do you see the relationship between
Heaven and Hell 8, where angels
know what is true only from the Lord, and the reading in Chapter 7 (near
the end of the "Preface" to
Revelation Unveiled (Apocalypse
Revealed in older translations), where Swedenborg makes
a point of having received certain doctrines from the Lord and not from
any angel?
From these readings, and the other quotations in the lesson, what do you
think Swedenborg teaches about "the eternity of the hells?" How does
that teaching compare with what you believe (or want to believe)?
Discuss the relationship between instruction in the World of Spirits and
the concept of universal salvation in Chapter 8.
Comment on the converted Muslims in
Heaven and Hell 515.
What questions
or issues does the lesson raise for you?
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