From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #0

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Table of Contents

Part 1:

1. Love is our life. §§1-3

2. God alone—the Lord—is love itself, because he is life itself. Both we on earth and angels are life-receivers. §§4-6

3. Divinity is not in space. §§7-10

4. God is the essential person. §§11-13

5. In the Divine-Human One, reality and its manifestation are both distinguishable and united. §§14-16

6. In the Divine-Human One, infinite things are distinguishably one. §§17-22

7. There is one human God who is the source of everything. §§23-27

8. The true divine essence is love and wisdom. §§28-33

9. Divine love is a property of divine wisdom, and divine wisdom is a property of divine love. §§34-39

10. Divine love and wisdom is substance and is form. §§40-43

11. Divine love and wisdom are substance and form in and of themselves, and are therefore wholly “itself” and unique. §§44-46

12. Divine love and wisdom cannot fail to be and to be manifested in others that it has created. §§47-51

13. Everything in the universe was created by the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. §§52-54

14. Everything in the created universe is a vessel for the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. §§55-60

15. All the things that have been created reflect the human in some respect. §§61-64

16. The useful functions of everything created tend upward, step by step, from the lowest to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source. §§65-68

17. Divinity fills all space in the universe nonspatially. §§69-72

18. Divinity is in all time, nontemporally. §§73-76

19. Divinity is the same in the largest and smallest things. §§77-82

Part 2:

20. In the spiritual world, divine love and wisdom look like a sun. §§83-88

21. Warmth and light emanates from the sun that arises from divine love and wisdom. §§89-92

22. That sun is not God. Rather, it is an emanation from the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. The same is true of warmth and light from that sun. §§93-98

23. The spiritual warmth and light that result from the emanation from the Lord as the sun form a single whole just as his divine love and wisdom do. §§99-102

24. The sun of the spiritual world is seen at a middle elevation, as far from angels as our physical world’s sun is from us. §§103-107

25. The distance between the sun and angels in the spiritual world is an apparent distance that depends on their acceptance of divine love and wisdom. §§108-112

26. Angels are in the Lord and the Lord is in them; and since angels are vessels, the Lord alone is heaven. §§113-118

27. The east in the spiritual world is where the Lord is seen as the sun, and the other directions follow from that. §§119-123

28. The regions in the spiritual world are not caused by the Lord as the sun but by the angels, depending on their receptivity. §§124-128

29. Angels always face the Lord as the sun, so south is on their right, north on their left, and west behind them. §§129-134

30. Everything in the deeper reaches of angels’ minds and bodies alike is turned toward the Lord as the sun. §§135-139

31. Every kind of spirit turns toward her or his ruling love in the same way. §§140-145

32. The divine love and wisdom that emanate from the Lord as the sun and constitute heaven’s warmth and light is the emanating Divinity that is the Holy Spirit. §§146-150

33. The Lord created the universe and everything in it by means of that sun that is the first emanation of divine love and wisdom. §§151-156

34. The physical world’s sun is nothing but fire and is therefore dead; and since nature has its origin in that sun, nature is dead. §§157-162

35. There would be no creation if it were not for this pair of suns, one living and one dead. §§163-166

36. The goal of creation—that everything should return to the Creator and that there should be a union— becomes manifest in outermost forms. §§167-172

Part 3:

37. There are atmospheres, liquids, and solids in the spiritual world just as there are in the physical world, but they are spiritual, while ours are physical. §§173-178

38. There are levels of love and wisdom, consequent levels of warmth and light, and also levels of atmosphere. §§179-183

39. There are two kinds of levels, vertical levels and horizontal levels. §§184-188

40. Vertical levels are matched in kind, with one following from another in sequence like a purpose, a means, and a result. §§189-194

41. The first level is the sum and substance of all the levels. §§195-198

42. All processes of perfection increase and rise by and according to levels. §§199-204

43. In a sequential arrangement, the first level is the highest and the third the lowest, while in a simultaneous arrangement, the first level is the center and the third level is the circumference. §§205-208

44. The final level is the composite, vessel, and foundation of the prior levels. §§209-216

45. The vertical levels find their full realization and power in their final form. §§217-221

46. There are levels of both kinds in everything that has been created, no matter how large or small. §§222-229

47. There are three infinite and uncreated vertical levels in the Lord, and three finite and created levels in us. §§230-235

48. These three vertical levels exist in each of us from birth and can be opened in sequence. As they are opened, we are in the Lord and the Lord is in us. §§236-241

49. Spiritual light f lows in within us through three levels, but not spiritual warmth except to the extent that we abstain from evils as sins and turn to the Lord. §§242-247

50. If that higher level, the spiritual level, is not opened in us, we become focused on the physical world and our sense impressions. §§248-255

51. In its own right, the earthly level of the human mind is a continuum, but because of its responsiveness to the two higher levels, it seems to have distinct levels when it is raised up. §§256-259

52. The earthly mind, being the envelope and vessel of the higher levels of the human mind, is reactive. If the higher levels are not opened, it acts against them; whereas if they are opened, it acts with them. §§260-263

53. The origin of evil is in the abuse of the abilities proper to us called rationality and freedom. §§264-270

54. Evil and false things are absolutely opposed to good and true things because evil and false things are demonic and hellish, while good and true things are divine and heavenly. §§271-276

55. Everything in the three levels of the earthly mind is enclosed in the works that are done by our physical actions. §§277-281

Part 4:

56. The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created the universe and everything in it not from nothing but from himself. §§282-284

57. The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah, could not have created the universe and everything in it except as a person. §§285-289

58. The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah, brought forth the sun of the spiritual world out of himself, and created the universe and all its contents from it. §§290-295

59. There are three things in the Lord that are the Lord—a divine element of love, a divine element of wisdom, and a divine element of service. These three things are made visible outside the sun of the spiritual world—the divine element of love through its warmth, the divine element of wisdom through its light, and the divine element of service through the atmospheres that enclose it. §§296-301

60. The atmospheres—three in number in each world, spiritual and physical—in their final forms terminate in the kinds of material substance characteristic of our earth. §§302-304

61. There is nothing of absolute Divinity in the material substances that make up earth, but they are still derived from absolute Divinity. §§305-306

62. All useful functions, which are the goals of creation, are in forms, and they get these forms from the material substances characteristic of earth. §§307-318

63. From a functional point of view, everything in the created universe is in our image; and this testifies that God is human. §§319-326

64. All of the Lord’s creations are useful functions; and they are useful functions in the sequence, on the level, and in the specific way that they relate to humanity and through humanity to the Lord, their source. §§327-335

65. Evil functions were not created by the Lord. Rather, they came into being along with hell. §§336-348

66. What we can see in the created universe bears witness to the fact that nature has brought forth nothing and contents ix brings forth nothing. Divinity brings forth everything from itself, and does so through the spiritual world. §§349-357

Part 5:

67. The Lord has created and formed within us two vessels and dwellings for himself called volition and discernment. Volition is for his divine love and discernment for his divine wisdom. §§358-361

68. Volition and discernment, the vessels of love and wisdom, are in the whole brain and every part of it and therefore in the whole body and every part of it. §§362-370

69. There is a correspondence between volition and the heart and between discernment and the lungs. §§371-393

70. From the correspondence of the heart with volition and the lungs with discernment, we can learn everything that can be known about volition and discernment or love and wisdom—everything, therefore, that can be known about the human soul. §§394-431

71. The nature of our first stage after conception. §432

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #432

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432. The nature of our first stage after conception. No one can know what our first or primal stage in the womb after conception is like because we cannot see it. Further, it is composed of a spiritual substance that is not visible in physical light. Some people in this world are inclined to focus their minds on our primal stage, the father's semen that is the agent of conception, and many of them have fallen into the error of thinking that we are complete humans from the very first and then reach completeness simply by getting larger. For this reason, some angels to whom the Lord had revealed it showed me what this first or primal stage of ours is like with respect to its form. Since they had made this a matter of their wisdom and since the delight of that wisdom was to share what they knew with others, they were given permission to present a representation of that initial form of ours to my own eyes in heaven's light.

It was like this. I saw what seemed to be a tiny image of a brain with a sort of face drawn faintly on its front, with no appendages. On its upper convex part, this primal form was a composite of closely connected little balls or spheres. Each sphere was made up of still smaller spheres, and each of these of spheres still smaller. This meant that there were three levels. Something that looked like a face was outlined on the front, concave part.

The convex part was enveloped by a very thin, transparent meningeal membrane. The convex part, the miniature image of a brain, was also divided into what seemed to be two lobes the way the full-scale brain is divided into two hemispheres. I was told that the right lobe was the vessel of love and that the left lobe was the vessel of wisdom, and that by some incredibly intricate connections they were like partners or roommates.

In the light of heaven, a radiant light, the angels also showed me that inwardly this composite structure of a miniature brain was in the design and form of heaven with respect to both its setting and its flow, while the outer composite structure was opposed to that design and that form.

Once I had seen what they showed me, the angels said that the two inner levels, the ones that were in the design and form of heaven, were vessels of love and wisdom from the Lord, while the outer level, the one that was opposed to heaven's design and form, was a vessel of hellish love and madness. This is because we are born into all kinds of evil because of our hereditary imperfection, and these evils are located in our outermost natures. These flaws cannot be eliminated unless our higher levels are opened, the levels that are vessels of love and wisdom from the Lord, as already noted. Further, since love and wisdom are the essential person, love and wisdom being the Lord in essence, and since this primal stage of ours is a vessel, it follows that there is in this primal stage a constant striving toward the human form, a form that it gradually takes on.

THE END

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