56. Again, heaven is where the Lord is acknowledged, believed in and loved. Variety in worship of the Lord resulting from the variety of good in one society and another is not harmful but beneficial, for the perfection of heaven is therefrom. It can scarcely be made clear to the comprehension that the perfection of heaven is the result of variety, without employing terms in common use in the learned world and by them showing how unity, to be perfect, is formed from various parts. Every unity has its existence from diversity, for a unity that is not the result of diversity is not anything; it has no form and therefore no quality. When, on the other hand, a unity comes into existence from various parts, and these various parts are in a perfect form in which each attaches itself in series, like a congenial friend to another, then the quality is perfect. So heaven is a unity resulting from the arrangements of various parts in the most perfect form, for the heavenly form is the most perfect of all forms. That this is the origin of all perfection is evident from all the beauty, pleasantness and delight that affect the senses as well as the mind (animus). For these exist and flow from no other source than the concert and harmony of many concordant and harmonious parts, either co-existing in order or following in order, and not from a unity apart from plurality. From this comes the saying that variety gives delight, and it is known that it is the nature of the variety which determines the delight. From all this it can be seen, as in a mirror, how perfection comes from variety even in heaven. For the things that are in the spiritual world can be seen as in a mirror ¹ from those that come into existence in the natural world.

Footnotes:

200. Heaven's Form, Which Determines How People Associate and Communicate There

To some extent, we can determine what heaven's form is like on the basis of what has been presented in the preceding chapters - that heaven has a basic similarity in its greatest and its smallest instances (72); that therefore each community is a heaven in lesser form, and each angel in least form (51-58); that as heaven as a whole resembles a single person, so every community of heaven resembles a person in lesser form and every individual angel in least form (59-77); that the wisest people are at the center, with the less wise around them all the way to the borders, and that the same holds true for each community (43); and that people who are engaged in the good of love live along the east-west axis and people who are engaged in truths that derive from the good along the south-north axis, which also holds true for each community (148-149). All these things are determined by heaven's form, so we can figure out what that form is like in a general sense. ¹

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