32. Love and faith are first called 'the great lights', then love is called 'the greater light' and faith 'the lesser light'. In reference to love it is said that it will have dominion over the day, and in reference to faith that it will have dominion over the night. Because these are arcana and have become hidden, especially at this end of an epoch, in the Lord's Divine mercy let the whole subject be opened up. The reason they have become hidden, especially at this present end of an epoch, is that now is the close of the age, when love is almost non-existent, and consequently faith too, just as the Lord Himself foretold in the Gospels with these words,

The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Matthew 24:29.

Here 'the sun' is used to mean love, which is 'darkened', 'the moon' faith which does not give its light, 'the stars' cognitions of faith which fall from heaven, and which are the various 'powers of the heavens'. The Most Ancient Church acknowledged no other faith than love itself; celestial angels as well do not know what faith is except faith which stems from love. Love pervades the whole of heaven, for in the heavens no other life is found except the life that belongs to love. This is the source of all happiness in heaven, a happiness so great that no aspect of it can be described or in any way captured in human concepts. People in whom this love is present love the Lord wholeheartedly. Yet they realize, say, and perceive that all love, thus all life, which belongs exclusively to love, and so all happiness, come from the Lord and nowhere else, and that they derive not one trace of love, life, and happiness from themselves. The Lord's being the source of all love was again represented by the greater light, that is, the sun, at the Transfiguration, for His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as the light, Matthew 17:2. What is inmost is meant by His face, and what emanates from the inmost by His garments. Thus His Divinity is meant by the sun or love, and His Humanity by the light or wisdom coming from love.

54. It can never be said that heaven is outside anyone. It is within; because every angel accepts the heaven that is outside in keeping with the heaven that is within. We can see, then, how mistaken people are who think that getting into heaven is simply a matter of being taken up among the angels, regardless of the quality of their inner life, who believe that heaven is granted merely because of [the Lord's] mercy. ¹ On the contrary, unless heaven is within an individual, nothing of the heaven that is outside flows in and is accepted.

There are many spirits who hold this opinion and who, because of their faith, have been taken up into heaven. However, once they arrived, because their inner life was contrary to the life angels are engaged in, they began to be blinded in their understanding to the point that they became virtually idiotic, while in regard to their self-control they began to be so tormented that they carried on like people gone mad. In short, people who have lived evil lives and who arrive in heaven bring their souls with them and are tormented like fish out of water, in the air, or like animals in the vacuum in air pumps once the air has been pumped out. It stands to reason, then, that heaven is within us and not outside. ²

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