Emanuel Swedenborg
The Divine of the Lord in heaven is love, for the reason that love is receptive of all things of heaven, such as peace, intelligence, wisdom and happiness.Collection: Intelligence
This Divine truth flows into heaven from the Lord from His Divine love.Collection: Truth
Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own.Collection: Love
True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense.
The act of exploring what the men are, and moreover the separation of the good from the evil, is visitation; and the good are then removed, and the evil are left behind.
In the Christian world... it is believed that angels were created at the beginning, and that heaven was formed of them; and that the Devil or Satan was an angel of light, who, becoming rebellions, was cast down with his crew, and that this was the origin of hell.
The angels taken collectively are called heaven, for they constitute heaven; and yet that which makes heaven in general and in particular is the Divine that goes forth from the Lord and flows into the angels and is received by them.
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.
But by all this I am not deterred, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt.
Moreover, no one is judged from the natural man, thus not so long as he lives in the natural world, for man is then in a natural body; but everyone is judged in the spiritual man, and therefore when he comes into the spiritual world, for man is then in a spiritual body.
Man was so created by the Lord as to be able while living in the body to speak with spirits and angels, as in fact was done in the most ancient times; for, being a spirit clothed with a body, he is one with them.
In heaven there are two distinct loves, love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor, in the inmost or third heaven love to the Lord, in the second or middle heaven love towards the neighbor.
And as the Divine that goes forth from the Lord is the good of love and the truth of faith, the angels are angels and are heaven in the measure in which they receive good and truth from the Lord.
First of all it must be known who the God of heaven is, since upon that all the other things depend.
For in every particular of the Word there is an internal sense which treats of things spiritual and heavenly, not of things natural and worldly, such as are treated of in the sense of the letter.
For the judgment was accomplished not only upon all the men of the Christian church, but also upon all who are called Mohammedans, and, moreover, upon all the Gentiles in the whole world.
For the spiritual sense of the Word treats everywhere of the spiritual world, that is, of the state of the church in the heavens, as well as in the earth; hence the Word is spiritual and Divine.
I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections.
I have often talked with angels on this subject, and they have invariably declared that in heaven they are unable to divide the Divine into three, because they know and perceive that the Divine is One and this One is in the Lord.
In the spiritual body moreover, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions.
That all who have ever been born men from the beginning of creation, and are deceased, are either in heaven or in hell, follows from those things which have been said and shown in the preceding article, namely, that Heaven and Hell are from the human race.
That every man after the life in the world lives to eternity, is evident from this, that man is then spiritual, and no longer natural, and that the spiritual man, separated from the natural, remains such as he is to eternity, for man's state cannot be changed after death.
The quality of the Lord's church on earth, cannot be seen by any man, so long as he lives in the world, still less how the church in process of time has turned aside from good to evil.
There are angels that receive more interiorly the Divine that goes forth from the Lord, and others that receive it less interiorly; the former are called celestial angels, and the latter spiritual angels.
To have dominion by religion, is to have dominion over men's souls, thus over their very spiritual life, and to use the Divine things, which are in their religion, as the means.
Without such a Life, the Word as to the letter is dead.
He who is in evil, is also in the punishment of evil.
Heaven is not located on high, but where the good of love is, and this resides within a person, wherever he or she might be.Collection: Love Is
God created us in such a way that our inner self is in the spiritual world and our outer self is in the physical world. This was so that the spiritual part of us, which belongs in heaven, could be planted in the physical part the way a seed is planted in the ground.Collection: Spiritual
Worship does not consist in prayers and in external devotion, but in a life of kindness.Collection: Prayer
Kindness is an inner desire that makes us want to do good things even if we do not get anything in return. It is the joy of our life to do them. When we do good things from this inner desire, there is kindness in everything we think, say, want, and do.Collection: Inspirational
Conscience is God's presence in humans.Collection: Humans
For those who trust in the Divine all things are moving towards an everlasting state of happiness, and no matter what happens at any time to them, it contributes to that state.Collection: Moving
Every single moment of a person's life, both of the understanding and of the will, is a new beginning.Collection: Single Mom
This I can declare: things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world.Collection: Real
True wisdom is seeing what is beneficial to your eternal life, and managing your life according to that. You do this when you not only know these things and grasp them with your understanding, but also will and do them.Collection: Life
The divine essence itself is love and wisdom.Collection: God
The activity of love and faith is what makes heaven.Collection: Love
Seen in its own right, a loving person's inner spirit is an angel of heaven, and while we are living in the body we are also in the company of angels, even though we are not aware of it; and once we are released from the body we join them.Collection: Angel
People who have intended and loved what is evil in the world intend and love what is evil in the other life, and then 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; and after death they crave above all to be where their evil is. So after death, it is we, not the Lord, who cast ourselves into hell.Collection: People
In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young.Collection: Heaven
Our love is our life itself. What our love is like determines how we live and therefore everything about what we are as human beings.Collection: Love Is
People are unaware that spirits even exist, let alone that angels are present with them.Collection: Angel
Love comes into being through useful service to others.Collection: Service To Others
Peace has in it trust in the Lord, that He governs all things, provides all things, and leads to a good end.Collection: Trust
We are all spirits inwardly. This is what's alive in the body, not the body on its own.Collection: Alive
Goodness shapes our will, and truth shapes our understanding.Collection: Understanding
Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving.Collection: Acting
Man is an organ of life, and God alone is life.Collection: Life
Sacred scripture is like a mirror in which we see God, although each in a different way.Collection: Mirrors