From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #42

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42. It is the same with love and wisdom, the only difference being that the substances and forms that are love and wisdom are not visible to our eyes as are the organs of our external senses. Still, no one can deny that those matters of love and wisdom that we call thoughts, perceptions, and feelings are substances and forms. They are not things that go floating out from nothing, remote from any functional and real substance and form that are their subjects. There are in fact countless substances and forms in the brain that serve as the homes of all the inner sensation that involves our discernment and volition.

What has just been said about our external senses points to the conclusion that all our feelings, perceptions, and thoughts in those substances and forms are not something they breathe out; they themselves are functional and substantial subjects. They do not emit anything, but simply undergo changes in response to the things that touch and affect them. There will be more later [210, 273] on these things that touch and affect them.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #45

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45. Anyone who can with some thought conceive of and comprehend being and expression in itself must altogether conceive of and comprehend that it is the one and only absolute. The term absolute is used of that which alone is, and the term one and only of that which is the origin of everything else.

Now because the one and only absolute is substance and form, it follows that it is the one and only absolute substance and form. And because that absolute substance and form is Divine love and wisdom, it follows that it is the one and only absolute love, and the one and only absolute wisdom; consequently, that it is the one and only absolute essence, and the one and only absolute life. For love and wisdom together are life.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.