in conformity with their nature.[1] And this communion would not rest upon the conditions by which the relations of bodies are limited, but distance in space and time,[2] which forms in the visible world the great cleft severing all communion, would disappear. We should, therefore, have to regard the human soul as being conjoined in its present life with two worlds at the same time, of which it clearly perceives only the material world, in so far as it is conjoined with a body, and thus forms a personal unit.[3] But as a member of the spiritual world it receives and gives out the pure influences of immaterial natures, so that, as soon as the accidental conjunction has ceased, only that communion remains which at all times it has with spiritual natures.[4][7]
- ↑ 17 (p. 60).—"As heaven is a man in greatest form, and a society of heaven, in less form, so is an angel, in least form; for in the most perfect form, such as the form of heaven is, there is a likeness of the whole in a part, and of a part in the whole. The cause that it is so is, that heaven is a communion; for it communicates all its own to every one, and every one receives all that is his from that communion: an angel is a receptacle, and thence a heaven in theleast form; as also was shown above in its proper article. Man also, as far as he receives heaven, is likewise so far a receptacle, is a heaven, and is an angel."—H. H., 73.
- ↑ 18 (p. 60).—"An idea of anything without origin cannot exist with the natural man, thus neither can the idea of God from eternity; but it exists with the spiritual man. The thought of the natural man cannot be separated and withdrawn from the idea of time, for this idea is inherent in it from nature, in which it is; so neither can it be separated and withdrawn from the idea of origin, because origin is to it a beginning in time; the appearance of the sun's progress has impressed on the natural man this idea. But the thought of the spiritual man, because it is elevated above nature, is withdrawn from the idea of time, and instead of this idea there is the idea of a state of life, and instead of duration of time, there is a state of thought derived from affection which constitutes life." (See also Note 21.)—Ath. Cr., 32.
- ↑ 19 (p. 60).—"All men, as to the interiors which belong to their minds, are spirits, clothed in the world with a material body, which is, in each case, subject to the control of the spirit's thought, and to the decision of its affection; for the mind, which is spirit, acts, and the body, which is matter, is acted upon. Every spirit also, after the rejection of the material body, is a man, in form similar to that which he had when he was a man in the world."—Ath. Cr., 41.
- ↑ 20 (p. 60).—"What is material sees only what is material, but what is spiritual sees what is spiritual. On this account when the material of the eye is veiled and deprived of its cc-operation with the spiritual, spirits appear in their own form, which is human; not only spirits who are in the spiritual world, but also the spirit which is in another man, while he is yet in his body." —H. H., 453.
"When the body is no longer able to perform its functions in the natural world, corresponding to the thoughts and affections of its spirit, which it has from the spiritual world, then man is said to die. This takes place when the respiratory motions of the lungs and the systolic motions of the heart cease; but still man does not die, but is only separated from the corporeal part which was of use to him in the world; for man himself lives. It is said that man himself lives, because man is not man from the body, but from the spirit, since the spirit thinks in man, and thought with affection makes man.Hence it is evident, that man, when he dies, only passes from one world into another."
- ↑ 21 (p. 60).—"The worldly and corporeal man does not see God except from space, he thus regards God as the whole inmost principle in the universe, consequently as something extended. But God is not to be seen from space; for there is no space in the spiritual world, space there being only an appearance derived from that which resembles it."—Ath. Cr., 19.
- ↑ 22 (p. 60).—"It can in no case be said that heaven is without, but that it is within man; for every angel receives the heaven which is without him according to the heaven that is within him. This plainly shows how much he is deceived who believes that to go to heaven is merely to be taken up among the angels without regard to the quality of one's interior life: that is, that heaven may be given to every one from immediate mercy: when yet, unless heaven is within a person, nothing of the heaven which is without him flows in and is received."—H. H., 54.
"The angelic societies in the heavens are distant from each other according to the general and specific differences of their goods. For distances in the spiritual world are from no other origin than from a difference in the states of the interior life: consequently in the heavens, from a difference in the states of love."—H. H., 41, 42.
- ↑ If one speaks of heaven as the seat of the happy, common conception likes to place it above, high up in the immeasurable universe. But one does not consider that our earth, viewed from those regions, must also appear as one of the stars of heaven, and that the inhabitants of other worlds, with as good reason, may point to us and say, "See there the dwelling-place of eternal joys, a heavenly abode, prepared to receive us some day."[5] For a queer illusion makes the high flight which hope takes, always to be connected with the idea of rising physically, without considering that however high we may have risen, we have to descend again to land eventually in another world. According to the ideas just mentioned, heaven would be properly the spirit-world, or, perhaps, the happy part of it, and this we would have to seek neither above nor below, because such an immaterial whole must be conceived of, not according to the further or nearer distances of corporeal things, but according to the spiritual connections of its parts with each other. Its members, at least, are conscious of themselves only according to such relations.[6]
