5. 3. There is some image of this unity in everything that has been created. We can tell from what is presented throughout Divine Love and Wisdom that in everything created there is some image of the divine love and wisdom that are a whole in the Lord and that emanate from him as a whole. See especially Divine Love and Wisdom 47-51, 54-60 [Divine Love and Wisdom 55-60], Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284, 290-295, 316-318 [Divine Love and Wisdom 313-318], Divine Love and Wisdom 319-326, 349-357. I have explained in these passages that Divinity is present in everything that has been created because God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity, brought forth the sun of the spiritual world from his actual self, and by means of that sun brought forth the whole universe. This means that that sun, which is from the Lord and is where the Lord is, is not only the first but the only substance of which everything is made. Since it is the only substance, it follows that it is present in everything that has been created, but with infinite variety depending on function.

[2] In the Lord, then, there is divine love and wisdom; in the sun that comes from him there is divine fire and divine radiance; and from that sun come spiritual warmth and spiritual light, with the two making a single whole. It follows, then, that some image of this whole is present in everything that has been created.

This is why everything in the universe is based on what is good and what is true and in fact on their union, or (which amounts to the same thing) everything in the universe is based on love and wisdom and on their union, since goodness is a matter of love and truth is a matter of wisdom. Love in fact calls everything of its own good, and wisdom calls everything of its own true.

We will see now that this union is present in everything that has been created.

168. MAN'S AWAKENING FROM THE DEAD, AND HIS ENTRY INTO ETERNAL LIFE

Since I am being allowed, as mentioned already, ¹ to make known step by step how someone passes from the life of the body into that of eternity, and so that it might be known how a person is awakened, I have been shown not by hearing but by actual experience.

Bilješke:

349. Visible phenomena in the created universe attest that nothing has been or is produced by nature, but everything by the Divine from itself, and this through the spiritual world. Most people in the world speak in accordance with the appearance that the sun by its heat and light produces whatever they see in fields, meadows, gardens and forests; that the sun by its warmth hatches grubs from eggs and causes beasts of the earth and birds of the sky to reproduce; indeed, even that it gives life to mankind.

People who only speak in this way because of the appearance can do so even though they do not ascribe these things to nature, because they are not thinking about it. For example, people who speak of the sun as rising and setting and creating days and years, or as being now at this or that height, speak in this way in accordance with the appearance, and can do so, even though they do not ascribe these things to the sun, because they are not thinking about the sun's stationary position and the revolution of the earth.

On the other hand, people who confirm themselves in the notion that the sun by its heat and light produces the phenomena that appear on the earth, eventually ascribe all things to nature, including as well the creation of the universe, and they become adherents of naturalism and at last atheists. After that they may indeed say that God created nature and endowed it with the power of producing such phenomena, but they say so for fear of losing their reputation. At the same time, however, by God the Creator they mean nature, and some of them the inmost element of nature, and they then regard as of no account any Divine tenets that the church teaches.