Conversations with Angels: What Swedenborg Heard in Heaven - Tapa blanda

Leonard Fox studied at New York University, Columbia University, and the Universities of London and Munich, and he has taught Sanskrit, Russian, and linguistics at various universities. He has published books on Albanian customary law and Albanian grammar, and on Malagasy poetry. Mr. Fox was also the editor of Arcana: Inner Dimensions of Spirituality, a journal devoted to studies in comparative religion and the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg.

Donald L. Rose was a Swedenborgian minister who was educated at the Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, and at the University of Grenoble in France. He served his ministry in Australia, New Zealand, France, and Holland. During nine years in London, he participated in the work of the Swedenborg Society. He produced a number of Swedenborgian studies designed for young people, including The Human Face. He was the co-editor of Debates with Devils, a companion book to Conversations with Angels, and more recently edited the Foundation title Afterlife.

"Preparation for heaven takes place in the so-called world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell. All who have been prepared for heaven, after their time has been completed, develop an intense desire to go there. So their eyes are opened, and they see a path that leads in the direction of some community in heaven. They take this path and head up it. At the top there is a gateway with a gatekeeper. He opens the gate and they walk in right away. Then the person in charge of the community sends an investigator to meet them, who conveys the message that they should go farther into the community and find out whether there is a house anywhere that they recognize as their own, for there is a brand new house for every newly arrived angel. And if they find one, they send back a message to that effect and stay there. But if they don't find one, they return and say that they didn't see one. And then some wise person explores them to see if their light agrees with the light in that community, and even more so, their heat. For at its essence the light of heaven is divine truth and its heat is divine goodness. Both stream down from the Lord as the sun there. If they have a different light and heat (meaning a different truth and goodness) from the light and head of that community, they are not accepted.

"So they leave there and wander the pathways opened up from one community to another until they find one that is in complete agreement with what they love and care for. And that becomes their home forever, because they are among their own kind, just as if they were among friends and relatives whom they love because they share a fondness for the same sort of things. And there they are in the bliss of their life and in their heart's delight from a sense of peace in their souls. For in the light and heat of heaven, there is an inexpressible delight that everyone shares with everyone else. This is what happens to those who become angels.

"Now those who are into doing evil and lying, too, are allowed with permission to go up to heaven. But when they get there, they start to have difficulty breathing. Soon their vision blurs, their intellect becomes dark, their thought process shuts down, the glazed look of death comes over their eyes, and they stand there like lifeless lumps. Then they start to feel heart palpitations, constriction in their chest, overwhelming mental distress, and a greater and greater sense of torture. By this point, they are twisting and thrashing like a snake by the fire. So they roll away and throw themselves off of a cliff that appears to them. They don't rest until they are in hell with their own kind, where they can breathe and where their heart is free to beat. After that they hate heaven and reject the truth and blaspheme the Lord at heart, thinking that the torture and torment they experienced in heaven was His doing.

"From this information alone you can see what kind of final outcome awaits those who see no value in what is true, even though it makes the light in which the angels of heaven live, and not value in what is good, even though it makes the heat in which the angels of heaven live. You can also see how wrong it is to believe that just being led into heaven would enable you to enjoy heavenly bliss. For nowadays people believe that to get into heaven all you need is the Lord's mercy and that getting into heaven is like our coming into a house where there's a wedding, and at the same time coming into the joy and happiness that are there. But people need to know that in the spiritual world feelings are communal rather than individual, since people are spirits at that point and feelings constitute a spirit's life. Their thoughts originate in and are driven by their feelings. Similar feelings bring spirits together, while opposite ones drive them apart; and a feeling opposite to their own is a form of torture for them. So a devil feels tortured in heaven; an angel feels tortured in hell. For this reason all spirits have to be grouped accurately according to the diversity, variety, and differences of their feelings stemming from their overall state of love."

- From Apocalypse Revealed (Revelation Unveiled) 611