Then the angel who had the trumpet
thus addressed them: "You see now that the joys of heaven and eternal
happiness arise not from the place, but from the state of the man's
life; and a state of heavenly life is derived from love and wisdom; and
since it is use which contains love and wisdom, and in which they are
fixed and subsist, therefore a state of heavenly life is derived from
the conjunction of love and wisdom in use. It amounts to the same if we
call them charity, faith, and good works; for charity is love, faith is
truth whence wisdom is derived, and good works are uses. Moreover in our
spiritual world there are places as in the natural world; otherwise
there could be no habitations and distinct abodes; nevertheless place
with us is not place, but an appearance of place according to the state
of love and wisdom, or of charity and faith. Every one who becomes an
angel, carries his own heaven within himself, because he carries in
himself the love of his own heaven; for a man from creation is the
smallest effigy, image, and type of the great heaven, and the human form
is nothing else; wherefore every one after death comes into that society
of heaven of whose general form he is an individual effigy;
consequently, when he enters into that society he enters into a form
corresponding to his own; thus he passes as it were from himself into
that form as into another self, and again from that other self into the
same form in himself, and enjoys his own life in that of the society,
and that of the society in his own; for every society in heaven may be
considered as one common body, and the constituent angels as the similar
parts thereof, from which the common body exists.
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