Heaven

Swedenborg tells us that heaven has three levels: the heavenly or celestial, the spiritual, and the natural. In keeping with the oddity of space and time in the spiritual world, he will interchangeably describe these three levels as progressing either upward or inward.

It’s common to visualize heaven as being far above us and hell as being far below us. Because it is difficult to think apart from time and space, Swedenborg also speaks in those terms. He teaches that we are surrounded by the world of spirits, with heaven above us and hell below us; those in the “highest” heaven are “closest” to the Lord, while those in the “lowest” hell are described as being farthest away. These spatial terms are useful when we consider that in common speech we say things like, “I feel very close to my cousin, even though she lives very far away.” We know that we are speaking about spiritual affinity, not geographical proximity.

At the top of everything, at the highest point, is the Lord, whom Swedenborg describes as a living sun radiating divine good and truth throughout creation.

Swedenborg, however, does not limit himself to this top-down paradigm. He also describes heaven as being human in form, with individual communities corresponding to the function of the organs in our body. (For more on this, see the page on the Universal Human.) In this view, the Lord is the center of the body, not in the literal sense of being part of its anatomy, but in the more spiritual sense of being at the “core” of the being, sustaining it just as we are sustained by our souls.

Heaven, then, is not so much a place as a collective entity made up of good people who perform an important use, much as we ourselves are made up of individual cells and atoms that are essential to the full functioning of our body. The animating force of heaven, as well as of living creatures on earth, is God’s love and wisdom. God, for Swedenborg, is not a remote being who created the universe and then retired to heaven; on the contrary, God is the very essence of life, love, and wisdom itself, the source and sustenance of all that exists. In brief, God is closer to us than the beating of our heart and the breath of our nostrils. But we only experience this closeness to the extent that we align ourselves with God’s will. This is what opens us to the influx of God’s love and wisdom—also called heaven.

While Swedenborg describes heaven as being a place of inexpressible joy and peace, he also warns that people who are not ready to experience a certain level of heaven will feel uncomfortable, even sick, and will be forced to retreat back down to lower levels until they have been properly prepared. This is even truer of spirits who are bound for hell.

(FB post by Mark Alexander)