of being suddenly lifted up; but this appearance was caused by, and was in perfect correspondence with, a change which took place at that time in the condition of the apostle's own mind. It was produced by a sudden opening of his spiritual senses even to the third degree.[1] No one ever was or ever can be carried to heaven—the heaven of which the Bible speaks—by being elevated bodily to the upper regions of space;—no, not even if he were lifted higher than the stars.
Then in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, we find the rich man represented as alive and in hell after the death and burial of his material body; which proves conclusively that the hell of which the Bible speaks, is not any region of natural space, but the state or condition of the wicked—and a state, too, in which they find themselves after the death of the body.
How, then, are we to arrive at the true Scripture im-
- ↑ According to Swedenborg, man is endowed with spiritual senses, which are ordinarily closed during his sojourn in the flesh. Yet these senses may be and sometimes are opened during his abode on earth; and when opened, he is intromitted into the spiritual world, and sees the objects and hears the sounds of that world as plainly as with his natural senses he sees and hears the objects and sounds of the natural world. And if the spiritual senses are opened to the third or inmost degree (for there are three degrees to the mind corresponding to the three angelic heavens) the individual is thereby intromitted into the third or highest heaven. This, Swedenborg tells us, is the way in which he was admitted into heaven while on earth. And it was the way in which Paul was "caught up."
