from the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #84

Studere hoc loco

  
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84. Because these two worlds are so distinct from each other, it is quite obvious that the spiritual world is under a different sun than is the physical world. There is just as much warmth and light in the spiritual world as there is in the physical world, but the warmth there is spiritual and so is the light. Spiritual warmth is the good that thoughtfulness does and spiritual light is the truth that faith perceives.

Now, since the only possible source of warmth and light is a sun, it stands to reason that there is a different sun in the spiritual world than there is in the physical world. It also stands to reason that because of the essential nature of the spiritual world's sun, spiritual warmth and light can come forth from it, while because of the essential nature of the physical world's sun, physical warmth [and light] can come forth from it. The only possible source of anything spiritual--that is, anything that has to do with what is good and true--is divine love and wisdom. Everything good is a result of love and everything true is a result of wisdom. Any wise individual can see that this is their only possible source.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

from the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #85

Studere hoc loco

  
/ 432  
  

85. People have not realized before that there is another sun besides the sun of our physical world. This is because our spiritual nature has become so deeply involved in our physical nature that people do not know what the word "spiritual" means. So they do not realize that there is a spiritual world other than and different from this physical one, a world where angels and spirits live.

Because that spiritual world has become so completely hidden from people in this physical world, the Lord has graciously opened the sight of my spirit so that I can see things in that world just the way I see things in this physical world, and then provide descriptions of that spiritual world. This I have done in the book Heaven and Hell, which has a chapter on the sun of the spiritual world. I have in fact seen it, and it seemed about the same size as the sun of this physical world. It had a similar fiery look, but was more reddish. I was given to understand that the whole angelic heaven lies beneath this sun and that angels of the third heaven see it constantly, angels of the second heaven often, and angels of the first or most remote heaven occasionally.

It will be made clear in what follows that all their warmth and all their light--everything people see in that world--comes from that sun.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.