The Bible

 

Genesis 1:30

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30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Commentary

 

Morning

  
Two gorgeous red poppies -- one popped, and one just about to.

Morning comes with the rising of the sun, and the sun -- which gives life to the earth with its warmth and light -- represents the Lord in His divinity, bringing spiritual life through love and wisdom. Thus, the morning represents the coming of the Lord into our lives, and all the things that flow from it: the love, joy and enlightenment He brings; the peace and tranquility of passing the spiritual obscurity of night; the anticipation of the learning and usefulness of a new day; and the awareness of The Lord's renewed presence.

(References: Apocalypse Explained 179; Apocalypse Revealed 151; Arcana Coelestia 2333 [1-3], 2540, 2780, 5740, 8211, 8812, 10134, 10200, 10413; True Christian Religion 764 [1-2])

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #8325

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8325. 'You will bring them in' means raising up. This is clear from the meaning of 'bringing in', when used to denote taking to heaven, as raising up. The words 'raising up' are used because heaven beheld by outward sight that spirits possess is on high; and when beheld by inward sight such as angels possess heaven occupies an inward position. Everything inward in the next life manifests itself in a representative fashion as something above, and everything outward as something below; consequently heaven appears up above and hell down below, 2148, 3084, 4599, 5146. For states of truth and good, and in the contrary sense states of falsity and evil, are what positions high up and those deep down, in short, distances and places, represent in the next life, see 2625, 2837, 3356, 3387, 4321, 4882, 5605, 7381.

[2] The following experience alone enables one to infer how difficult it is for a natural man to apprehend spiritual things, consequently things that belong to heaven. Can anyone like him see that space and time do not exist in heaven, but states instead? Or to be more precise, that states of good or states of being (esse) exist there, presenting themselves as extents of space, and states of truth or states of coming-into-being (existere), presenting themselves as periods of time? Will not a merely natural man suppose that where time and space do not exist there is complete emptiness and nothingness? From this it is evident that if a natural man makes up his mind to believe nothing apart from what he can apprehend he lays himself open to grossly mistaken ideas. And as it is with space and time, so it is also with many other matters. For example, a natural man inevitably falls into a nonsensical way of thinking about God when with notions involving the passage of time he contemplates what God was doing before the creation of the world, that is, what He was engaged in from eternity up to then. Nor can he be extricated from that tangled knot until notions of time and space are banished. When angels contemplate that eternity they never do so with notions of time but with ideas of state.

[3] In the next life two statues appear, partly of flesh and partly of stone. They are stationed on the edge of the created universe, in front over to the left. They are said to swallow up those who contemplate what God was doing from eternity before He created the world. The swallowing up represents the consideration that since a person cannot contemplate anything without notions involving space and time he cannot extricate himself from the difficulty unaided. He does so only with the aid of God, either by ceasing to contemplate the matter or by banishing notions involving time.

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