The Swedenborg Library Vol 2/Chapter 8
VIII.
THE HUMAN FORM OF HEAVEN.
HAT heaven in its whole complex resembles one man, is an arcanum not yet known in the world; but in heaven it is very well known. To know this, together with the specific and particular things relating to it, is the chief article of the intelligence of the angels. On this knowledge also depend many more things which, without it as their general principle, could not enter distinctly and clearly into the ideas of their minds. Because they know that all the heavens together with their societies resemble one man, therefore also they call heaven the Greatest and the Divine Man; Divine from this, that the Divine of the Lord makes heaven.
That celestial and spiritual things are arranged and conjoined into that form and image, cannot be conceived by those who have no just idea respecting things spiritual and celestial. They imagine that the terrestrial and material things which compose the ultimate of man, are what make him; and that he would not be man without them. But be it known to such that man is not man by virtue of these things, but by virtue of this: that he can understand what is true and will what is good; these are the spiritual and celestial things which make man.
It is also generally known that every man is such as is the character of his understanding and will; and it might also be known that his earthly body is formed to serve these faculties in the world, and to perform uses in accordance with their dictates in the ultimate sphere of nature. Therefore also the body has no activity of itself, but acts altogether obsequious to the nod of the understanding and the will, insomuch that whatever a man thinks, he utters with the tongue and lips; and whatever he wills, he performs with the body and its members; so that understanding and will are the active agent, and the body does nothing itself.
Hence it is evident, that the things of the understanding and will are what make man; and that these are in the human form, because they act upon the most minute parts of the body, as what is internal acts upon what is external. By virtue of these faculties, therefore, man is called an internal and spiritual man. Heaven is such a man in the greatest and most perfect form.
Such is the idea of the angels concerning man. Therefore they never attend to the things which man does with the body, but to the will from which the body does them. This they call the man himself, and the understanding so far as it acts in unison with the will.
The angels, indeed, do not see heaven in the whole complex in the form of a man; for the whole heaven sometimes see remote societies consisting of many thousands of angels, as one in such a form. And from a society as from a part, they form a conclusion concerning the whole which is heaven. For in the most perfect form, the whole is as the parts and the parts as the whole; the only difference being like that between similar things of greater and less magnitude. Hence they say that the whole heaven is such in the sight of the Lord [as a single society is when seen by them], because the Divine from the inmost and supreme beholds all things.
HEAVEN IS GOVERNED AS ONE MAN.
Such being the form of heaven, it is therefore ruled by the Lord as one man, and thence as one whole. For it is well known that although man consists of an innumerable variety of things, both in the whole and in part,—in the whole, of members, organs and viscera; in part, of series of fibres, nerves and blood vessels,—thus of members within members and parts within parts, yet the man, when he acts, acts as a unit. Such also is heaven under the auspices and guidance of the Lord.
The reason why so many different things in man act as one, is, because there is nothing whatever in him which does not contribute something to the common weal, and perform some use. The whole performs use to its parts, and the parts perform use to the whole; for the whole is made up of the parts, and the parts constitute the whole; therefore they provide for each other, have respect to each other, and are conjoined in such a form that all and each have reference to the whole and its good. Hence it is that they act as one.
Consociations in the heavens are similar. They are joined together there according to their uses in a like form. Therefore they who do not perform use to the community, are cast out of heaven as things foreign to its nature. To perform use is to desire the welfare of others for the sake of the common good; and not to perform use is to desire the welfare of others, not for the sake of the common good but for the sake of self. These latter love themselves supremely, but the former love the Lord above all things.
Hence it is that they who are in heaven act in unison, not from themselves but from the Lord; for they regard Him as the one only Source of all things, and his kingdom as the community whose good is to be sought. This is meant by the Lord's words, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all things shall be added unto you." Matt. vi. 33. To seek his righteousness is [to seek] his good.
They who, in the world, love the good of their country more than their own, and the good of their neighbor as their own, are they who, in the other life, love and seek the kingdom of the Lord,—for there the kingdom of the Lord is in the place of their country. And they who love to do good to others, not for their own sake but for the sake of the good, love their neighbor,—for in the other life good is the neighbor. All of this character are in the Grand Man, that is in heaven. (H. H., n. 59-64.)
How incomprehensible and unsearchable is the form of the human body, may appear in some general way from the nervous fibres whereby each and all of the parts are woven together. What is the nature of those fibres, and in what manner they perform their motions and fluxions in the brain, cannot be discerned by the eye; for innumerable fibres are there so folded together that, taken in the gross, they appear as a soft, continuous mass; and yet all and each of the things belonging to the will and understanding flow most distinctly into acts along those innumerable complicated fibres. How these fibres, again, wreathe themselves together in the body, appears from the various collections of them called plexuses,—such as the cardiac plexus, the mesenteric plexus, aud others; also from the knots of them which are called ganglions, into which many fibres from every province enter, and therein mingle together, and again go forth in new combinations to the performance of their functions,—and this repeated again and again; besides similar things in every viscus, member, organ and muscle.
Whoever examines these fibres with the eye of wisdom, and the many wonderful things pertaining to them, will be utterly astonished. And yet the things which the eye sees are few. Those which it does not see are yet more wonderful because they belong to an interior realm. That this form corresponds to the form of heaven, is very plain from the operation of all things of the understanding and will in it and according to it. For whatever a man wills, descends spontaneously into act according to that form; and whatever he thinks, pervades those fibres from their beginnings even to their terminations,—whence comes sensation; and because it is the form of thought and will, it is the form of intelligence and wisdom. It is this form which corresponds to the form of heaven. (H. H., n. 212.)
Since the whole heaven resembles one man, it is therefore distinguished into members and parts like man; and these are also named like the members and parts of man. The angels likewise know in what member one and another society is; and they say that one society is in the member or some province of the head; another in that of the breast; another in that of the loins; and so on.
The spirits who are beneath heaven are greatly surprised when they hear and see that heaven is beneath as well as above. For they think and believe, like men in the world, that heaven is nowhere but over head. They do not know that the situation of the heavens is like that of the members, organs and viscera in man, some of which are above and some beneath; and that it is like the situation of the parts in each member, organ and viscus, some of which are within and some without. Hence they have confused ideas concerning heaven. (H. H., n. 65, 66.)