Worlds in Space #9

By Emanuel Swedenborg

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9. II. THE WORLD OR PLANET MERCURY, AND ITS SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS

The whole heaven is in the form of a single human being, who is therefore called the Grand Man. Every detail, both outward and inward, in the human being answers to that Grand Man, that is, to heaven. This is a secret so far unknown in the world, but I have shown the truth of it at great length. 1 But those who reach heaven from our world are not enough to make up that Grand Man, being relatively few, so there will need to be people from many other worlds. The Lord's providence ensures that as soon as a deficiency in quality or quantity occurs at any point in the correspondence, people are instantly summoned from another world to fill up the numbers, so maintaining the proportion and keeping heaven stable.

Footnotes:

1. [Swedenborg’s Footnote] Heaven has a correspondence to the Lord, and a human being has in every detail a correspondence to heaven, so that in the Lord's eyes heaven is a man on the grand scale, and may be called the Grand Man (Arcana Caelestia 2996, 2998, 3624-3649 [original adds 3636-3643], 3741-3745, 4625). The whole subject of the correspondence of man and all his parts to the Grand Man who is heaven has been described from experience (3021, 3624-3649, 3741-3750 [3741 in original], Arcana Caelestia 3883-3896, 4039-4055 [4051 in original], Arcana Caelestia 4218-4228, 4318-4331, 4403-4421, 4523-4533 [from 4527 in original], Arcana Caelestia 4622-4633, 4652-4660, 4791-4805, 4931-4953, 5050-5061, 5171-5189, 5377-5396, 5552-5573, 5711-5727, 10030).

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