From Swedenborg's Works

 

Heaven and Hell #477

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477. There is a dominant love that remains with each of us after death and never changes to eternity. We all have many loves, but they all go back to our dominant love and form a single whole with it, or compose it in the aggregate. All the elements of our volition that agree with our dominant love are called loves because they are loved. There are deeper and more superficial loves, loves that are directly united and loves that are indirectly united; there are closer and more distant ones; there are loves that serve in various ways. Taken all together they make a kind of kingdom. They are actually arranged in this way within us even though we are utterly unaware of their arrangement. However, the arrangement becomes visible to some extent in the other life because the outreach of our thoughts and affections there depends on it. The outreach is into heavenly communities if our dominant love is made up of loves of heaven, but it is into hellish communities if our dominant love is made up of loves of hell.

On the outreach into communities of all the thought and affection of spirits and angels, see the previous chapters on the wisdom of heaven's angels and on heaven's form, which determines its gatherings and communications [265-275, 200-212].

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #552

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552. It was cast to the earth, and its angels were cast out with it. This symbolically means that they were cast into the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell, from which a direct conjunction is formed with people on earth.

The earth to which the dragon is said to have been cast means the world of spirits, because this world lies directly under the heavens, and when anyone is cast out of heaven, he does not sink immediately into hell, but onto the land in this world that is the nearest one beneath. For this world is midway between heaven and hell, being situated below the heavens and above the hells. More on this world may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell (London, 1758), nos. 421-535.

The people in this world all communicate directly with people on earth. The dragon and its angels consequently communicate with people caught up in falsities and their accompanying evils, owing to the heresy they have accepted regarding faith alone. The text accordingly says later in verse 12 of this chapter,

Therefore rejoice, O heavens...! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has a short time." (Revelation 12:12)

We are also told in verses 13-17 that the dragon pursued the woman into the wilderness, and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring.

It should be known that in respect to his affections and consequent thoughts, everyone is present in a society with people in the world of spirits, and indirectly through them with people either in heaven or in hell. Everyone's life depends on that conjunction.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.