The Swedenborg Library Vol 2/Chapter 1
Heaven.
I.
THE SEER'S CLAIM FRANKLY STATED.
HE arcana revealed in the following pages are those concerning heaven, together with the life of man after death. The man of the church at this day knows scarcely anything about heaven or hell, nor yet about his own life after death, although these things are all treated of in the Word. Nay, many even among those who were born within the church deny these things, saying in their hearts, Who has ever come thence and told us?
Lest, therefore, such a negative principle, which rules especially among those who possess much worldly wisdom, should also infect and corrupt the simple in heart and faith, it has been granted me to associate with angels and to converse with them as one man with another, and also to see the things which are in the heavens as well as those which are in the hells, and this for the space of thirteen years, so that I can now describe them from what I have myself seen and heard,—which I do, in the hope that ignorance may thus be enlightened and incredulity dissipated. The reason that such immediate revelation is made at this time, is, that this is what is meant by the coming of the Lord. (H. H., n. 1.)
THE RATIONALE OF SPIRIT-SEEING.
That there is a spiritual world inhabited by spirits and angels, distinct from the natural world inhabited by men, is a fact which, because no angel has descended and declared it, and no man has ascended and seen it, has been hitherto unknown even in the Christian world. Lest, therefore, from ignorance of the existence of such a world, and the doubts respecting the reality of heaven and hell which result from such ignorance, men should be infatuated to such a degree as to become naturalists and atheists, it has pleased the Lord to open my spiritual sight, and, as to my spirit, to elevate me into heaven and let me down into hell, and exhibit to my view the nature of both.
It has thus been made evident to me that there are two worlds completely distinct from each other; one of these is called the spiritual world, because all its objects are spiritual; the other is called the natural world, because all its objects are natural:—also that spirits and angels live in their own world, and men in theirs; and further, that every man passes by death from his world into the other, in which he lives to eternity. (I., n. 3.)
FACTS GATHERED FROM EXPERIENCE.
The interiors of my spirit have been opened by the Lord, and thus have I been permitted to converse with all whom I have ever known in the life of the body, after their decease; with some for days, with some for months, and with some for a year; many of whom were in the heavens and many in the hells.
I have also conversed with some two days after their decease, and have told them that preparations were now being made for their interment. They replied, that their friends did well to reject that which had served them for a body and its uses in the world. And they wished me to say that they were not dead but alive, being men now just the same as before, and that they had only migrated from one world to another; and that they were not conscious of having lost anything, since they were in a body and in the possession of bodily senses as before, and in the enjoyment of understanding and will as before; and that they had thoughts, affections, sensations and desires similar to those which they had in the world.
Most of those recently deceased, when they saw that they were still alive and men as before, and in a similar state (for after death every one's state of life is at first such as it had been in the world), were affected with new joy at being alive, and declared that they had not believed this.
But they wondered very much that they should have lived in such ignorance and blindness concerning the state of their life after death; and especially that the men of the church should be in such ignorance and blindness,—who yet, above all others in the whole world, might be in the enjoyment of light on these subjects.
They then first discovered the cause of that blindness and ignorance; which is, that external things, which are those that relate to the world and the body, have occupied and filled their minds to such a degree as to render them incapable of being elevated into the light of heaven, and of having any regard for the things of the church beyond its doctrinals. For when corporeal and worldly things are loved as they are at the present day, there flows from them into the mind mere darkness as soon as men go a step beyond.
A great many of the learned from the Christian world are astonished when they see themselves after their decease, possessed of a body, clad in garments and dwelling in houses as in the world; and when they call to mind what they had thought concerning the life after death, concerning the soul, concerning spirits, and concerning heaven and hell, they are filled with shame, and confess that they had thought foolishly, and that the simple in faith thought much more wisely than they. (H. H., n. 312, 313.)
