415. The Vastness of Heaven

The vastness of the Lord's heaven follows from many of the things that have been presented above, especially from the fact that heaven is from the human race (see 311-317), not only that portion of it born within the church but also the portion born outside it (see 318-328). This means that heaven includes everyone who has lived a good life since the very beginning of our planet.

Anyone familiar with the continents and regions and nations of this world may gather what a multitude of people there are on our whole globe. Anyone who goes into the mathematics of it will discover that thousands and thousands of people die on any given day, making hundreds of thousands or millions every year; and this has been going on since the earliest times, thousands of years ago. All of these people have arrived in the other world, called the spiritual world, after their decease, and they are still arriving.

I cannot say how many of these are or are becoming angels of heaven. I have been told that most of the earliest people became angels, because they thought more deeply and spiritually and were therefore enveloped in heavenly affection; while for later ages it was not so many because as time passed we became more externally minded and began to think more on the natural level, which meant that we were enveloped in more earthly affection.

This enables us to gather at the outset that heaven is huge simply from the inhabitants of this planet.

6314. As it is with light, so it is with the heat that is vital to a person's existence. In no way at all does that vital heat originate in the heat radiated by the sun in the world; rather, it originates in spiritual heat, which is love and radiates from the Lord. This heat is what angels have. Consequently the amount of vital heat a person has is determined by the amount of love he has. His body however is warmed by worldly heat, as is his sensory awareness within it; yet vital heat flows into that worldly heat and imparts life to it. Differences in the purity and intensity of this heat are akin to variations in the clarity of the light. This vital heat is what one should understand by the holy fires mentioned in the Word, and therefore heavenly loves are meant by those fires. But in a contrary sense that worldly heat is what one should understand by the fires of hell, and therefore hellish loves and the desires that go with them are meant when these fires are mentioned in the Word.