From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christianity #795

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795. Since this is how it is there, I have conversations every day with the races and peoples of this world. I have interaction not only with people in Europe but also people in Asia and Africa. I talk to people of a variety of religions. Therefore by way of an epilogue to this work I will add a brief description of the state of some of them.

Keep in mind that in the spiritual world, the state of every race and people in general and of each individual in particular depends on their acknowledgment and worship of God. All those who acknowledge God at heart, and from now on, who acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as God the Redeemer and Savior, are in heaven. People who do not acknowledge him are beneath heaven and are given instruction there. Those who accept the instruction are lifted up into heaven. Those who do not accept it are cast down into hell. In this second group are people like the Socinians, who turn to God the Father alone, and people like the Arians, who have denied that the Lord's human manifestation was divine. The Lord himself said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6); and when Philip asked to see the Father, the Lord said to him, "Those who see and recognize me, see and recognize the Father" (John 14:7 and following).

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #42

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42. The case is the same with love and wisdom, the only difference being that the substances and forms which constitute love and wisdom are not visible to the eyes as the organs of the external senses are. But still, no one can deny that substances and forms constitute those elements of wisdom and love that are called thoughts, perceptions and affections, and that these are not aerial entities flying about or flowing out of nothing, or things abstracted from real and actual substance and form which are the subjects of which they are predicated. For the brain has in it countless substances and forms which are the seat of every interior sense connected with the intellect and will.

All affections, perceptions and thoughts in those substances and forms are not exhalations from them, but are actually and really subjects which emit nothing from them, but simply undergo changes of state in accordance with the incoming stimuli that affect them, as may be seen from the observations above regarding the outward senses. (Regarding the incoming stimuli that affect them, more will be said below.)

  
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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.