# The Gist of Swedenborg/Heaven

HEAVEN
"Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life; and may enter in through the gates into the city.
—Rev., XXII, 14
"Thou wilt show me the path of life; In Thy presence is fulness of joy; At Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore."
—Psalm, XVI, 11
"THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU"
HEAVEN is in a man; and they who have heaven within themselves, come into heaven. Heaven in a man is to acknowledge the Divine, and to be led by the Divine.
Every angel receives the heaven which is around him according to the heaven which is within him. Unless heaven is within a man, none of the heaven around him flows in and is received.
Love to the Lord is the love regnant in the heavens; for there the Lord is loved above all things. Thus the Lord is All in all there. He flows into all the angels, and into each of them. He disposes them; He induces a likeness of Himself on them, and causes Heaven to be where He is. Hence an angel is heaven in the least form; a society is heaven in a greater form; and all the societies together are heaven in the greatest form.
—Heaven and Hell, nn. 319, 54, 58
AN ACTUAL WORLD
IN general, what appears in heaven, appears the same as it does in our material world of three kingdoms. Things appear before the eyes of angels just as objects of the ​three kingdoms do before the eyes of men in the world. Still there is this difference: the things which appear in heaven, have a spiritual origin, and those which appear in our world a material origin. Objects of a spiritual origin affect the senses of angels because these senses are spiritual, as those of a material origin affect the senses of men, inasmuch as their senses are material. Heavenly objects are said to have a spiritual origin, because they exist from the Divine which proceeds from the Lord as a Sun; and the Divine that proceeds from the Lord as a Sun is spiritual. For there the Sun is not fire, but Divine Love, appearing before the eyes of the angels as the sun of the world does before the eyes of men; and whatever proceeds from the Divine Love is Divine and is spiritual. Of this origin are all things which exist in the heavens, and they appear in forms like those in our world. It is due to the order of creation that they appear in such forms. According to that order, things which are of love and wisdom with the angels, on descending into the lower sphere in which angels are in respect of their bodies and of their sensation, present themselves in such forms and under such types. These are correspondences.
—Apocalypse Explained, n. 926
A WORLD OF ACTION
ALL heaven's delights are united to uses and inhere in them, because uses are the goods of love and charity, in which the angels are. The angels find all their happiness in use, from use, and according to use. There is the highest freedom in this because it proceeds from interior affection, and is conjoined with ineffable delight. Uses exist in the heavens in all variety and diversity. Never is the use of one angel quite the same as that of another; nor the delight. What is more, the delights of any one person's use are countless. These countless and various delights are nevertheless united in an order so that they mutually regard one another, as do the uses of every member, organ and inner part of the body. They are even more like the uses of each vessel and fibre in every member, organ and vital part; each and all of which are so related that they regard each of its own good in the other, and thus in all, and all in each. As a result of this general and several regard they act as one.
—Heaven and Hell, nn. 402, 403, 404, 405
OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN
EVERY little child, wheresoever born, whether within the Church or out of it, whether of pious parents or of impious, is received by the Lord at death; is educated in heaven; is taught and imbued with affections of good and by these with knowledges of truth; and then, as he is perfected in intelligence and wisdom, is introduced into heaven and becomes an angel.
When children die, they are still children in the other life. They have the same infantile mind, the same innocence in ignorance, and the same tenderness in all things. They have only the rudimentary capacity of becoming angels; for children are not yet angels, but are to become angels. The state of children in the other life far surpasses that of children in the world; for they are not clothed with an earthly body, but with a body like that of the angels. The earthly body is in itself heavy, and does not receive its first sensations and impulses from the interior or spiritual world, but from the exterior or natural world. In this world, therefore, infants must learn to walk, to control the body's motions, and to talk. Even their senses, like sight and hearing, must be developed by use. It is quite otherwise with children in the other life. Being spirits, they act at once in expression of their inner being, walking without practice, ​and also talking, but at first from general affections not yet distinguished into ideas of thought. They are quickly initiated into these, too, however; and this for the reason that outer and inner are homogeneous with them.
The Lord flows into the ideas of children chiefly from their inmost soul, for nothing has closed their ideas, as with adults. No false principles have closed them to the understanding of truth, nor any evil life to the reception of good, nor to becoming wise.
—Heaven and Hell, nn. 416, 330, 331, 836
TOWARD THE MORNING OF LIFE
THE Lord is present with every human being, urgent and instant to be received; and when a man receives Him, as he does when he acknowledges Him as his God, Creator, Redeemer and Saviour, then is His first Coming, which is called the dawn. From this time the man begins to be enlightened, as to understanding in things spiritual, and to advance into a more and more interior wisdom. As he receives this wisdom from the Lord, so he advances through morning into day, and this day lasts with him into old age, even to death; and after death he passes into heaven to the Lord Himself, and there, though he ​died an old man, he is restored to the morning of his life, and to eternity he develops the beginnings of the wisdom that was implanted in the natural world.
—True Christian Religion, n. 766
The people of heaven are continually advancing towards the spring-time of life; and the more thousands of years they live, the more delightful and happy is the spring to which they attain. Women who have died old and worn out with age, and have lived in faith in the Lord and in charity to the neighbor, come, with the succession of years, more and more into the flower of youth and early womanhood, and into a beauty exceeding every idea of beauty ever formed through the sight. In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young.
—Heaven and Hell, n. 414