2. The Lord is God of Heaven

First and foremost, we need to know who the God of heaven is, since everything else depends on this. Throughout the whole of heaven, no one is acknowledged as God of heaven except the Lord. Angels say what he himself taught, namely that he is one with the Father, that the Father is in him and he in the Father, that anyone who sees him sees the Father, and that everything holy emanates from him (John 10:30, 38; 14:9-11, 16; 16:13-15). I have often talked with angels about this, and their consistent testimony has been that in heaven they cannot divide the Divine into three because they both know and perceive that the Divine is one and that this "one" is in the Lord. They have also told me that when people arrive from earth with the idea of three divine beings they cannot be admitted to heaven. This is because their thinking vacillates between one opinion and the other, and in heaven they are not allowed to think "three" and say "one." ¹

In heaven people actually speak directly from their thought, so that we have there a kind of thoughtful speech or audible thought. This means that if people have divided the Divine into three in the world and held a separate image of each one without gathering and focusing these three into one, they cannot be accepted. In heaven, there is a communication of all thoughts, so if people arrive who think "three" and say "one," they are recognized immediately for what they are and are sent away.

Still, it needs to be realized that in the other life any people who have not put "good" in one compartment and "true" in another - who have not separated faith from love - accept the heavenly concept of the Lord as God of the universe once they have been taught. It is different, though, with people who have separated their faith from their lives, that is, who have not lived by the guiding principles of true faith.

Notas de rodapé:

1408. The events described here and in what follows took place in history as they are recorded, yet the historical events as described are representative, and every word carries a spiritual meaning. This is so in all of the historical parts of the Word, not only in the Books of Moses but also in those of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, all of which books contain nothing else than historical narratives. But although they are historical narratives in the sense of the letter, in the internal sense there are arcana of heaven lying hidden there. These arcana cannot possibly be seen as long as the mind keeps its eye fixed on the historical details, nor are they disclosed until the mind removes itself from the sense of the letter. The Word of the Lord is like a body that has a living soul within it. The things that belong to the soul are not apparent as long as the mind is fixed on those of the body, so much so that it scarcely believes it possesses a soul, even less that it will be alive after death. But as soon as the mind departs from bodily things, those belonging to the soul and to life show themselves; and in this lies the reason not only why bodily things must die before a person can be born anew or be regenerated, but also why the body must die so that he can enter heaven and behold heavenly things.

[2] The same applies to the Word of the Lord Its bodily parts are the things that constitute the sense of the letter, and when the mind is fixed on these the internal things are not seen at all. But once the bodily parts so to speak have died, the internal for the first time are brought to view. All the same, the things constituting the sense of the letter are like the things present with man in his body, namely the facts belonging to the memory which come in through the senses and which are general vessels containing interior or internal things. From this one may recognize that the vessels are one thing and the essential elements within the vessels another. The vessels are natural, and the essential elements within the vessels are spiritual and celestial. In the same way the historical narratives of the Word, as with each individual expression in the Word, are general, natural, indeed material vessels that have spiritual and celestial things within them. These things never come into sight except through the internal sense.

[3] This may become clear to anyone simply from the fact that many matters in the Word have been stated according to appearances, indeed according to the illusions of the senses, such as that the Lord is angry, punishes, curses, slays, and many other such statements, when in fact the internal sense contains the reverse, namely that the Lord is never angry or punishes, still less curses or slays. All the same, no harm at all is done to people who in simplicity of heart believe the Word as they find it in the letter so long as they are leading charitable lives, the reason being that the Word teaches nothing other than this - that everyone ought to live in charity with his neighbour and to love the Lord above all things. People doing this are in possession of the internal things, and thus with them the illusions acquired from the sense of the letter are easily dispersed.

10736. After I had realized that I was as to my spirit out in space, far beyond our solar system - for this could be recognized from the changes of state and resulting movement onwards that was evident, lasting continuously for almost ten hours - I eventually heard spirits talking near to some planet, which I afterwards saw. When I came near them they said, after we had been talking together for a while, that on occasion they have visitors from somewhere else who talk to them about God and confuse the ideas in their minds. They also showed me the way by which those visitors come, from which I realized that they were some spirits belonging to our own planet. And when asked in what way those visitors had confused them they replied, By their saying that people should believe in a Deity distinguished into three persons, whom they nevertheless call one God. And when they investigate what is in the visitors' minds this presents itself not as three continuing from one into another but as three distinct and separate from one another; and in some minds they are seen as three persons talking among themselves, one to another. And although they call each person God and have a different idea of each they nevertheless say they are one God. The spirits conversing with me complained bitterly that the visitors confused them by their thinking three and saying one, when in fact what people think ought to match what they say, and what they say ought to match what they think. At that time they also investigated the kind of idea that the preacher accompanying me had regarding one God and three persons. The picture in his mind portrayed three gods, who however made one by their continuing from one into another; yet the idea in his mind presented this trinal unity as an entity which, being Divine, was invisible. And when this idea presented itself it was recognized that his thought was of the Father alone and not of the Lord, and that he pictured the invisible God as being no more than the forces of nature in their first beginnings. Consequently the inmost component of the natural order was his God. It should be remembered that in the next life the ideas contained in a person's mind regarding any matter at all present themselves in a visual, true to life way, and that the nature of everyone's belief is investigated by means of this presentation. It should be remembered also that the ideas in a person's mind regarding God are the chief ones of all; for through those ideas, if they are sincere, a joining to heaven is effected, since that which is Divine is what constitutes heaven.