Bölümler
-
Chelsea shares an announcement about the Inside Off The Left Eye podcast, as well as gratitude to our listeners.
Secrets of Heaven volumes 3 and 4 are now available! To read the latest publications on which Dr. Jonathan Rose and his team have been working so hard, follow these links:
https://swedenborg.com/product/secrets-heaven-3-nce/
https://swedenborg.com/product/secrets-heaven-4-nce/
And for a whole library of books and videos to dig into, go to our two websites: www.swedenborg.com and www.offthelefteye.com
Or check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/offthelefteye
If you'd like to support our ongoing efforts in translation, publication, and content production, go to https://www.offthelefteye.com/donate/
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
2798:2
It is also known that he was born to the Virgin Mary, but this was a birth like that of any other person. When he was born again—in other words, was made divine—it was from Jehovah, who was in him and who was the very essence of his life. The uniting of his divine and human natures was a mutual, reciprocal process, so that he united his divine nature with his human nature and his human nature with his divine.
2894
Moreover, since the Word means the Lord’s divine humanity, it means all the truth that tells of and comes from him, in his kingdom in the heavens and in his church on earth. That is why it says that in him was life, the life was the light of humankind, and the light appears in the darkness.
3441:1-2
Because of Abraham my servant means from the Lord’s divine humanity. This can be seen from the representation of Abraham as the Lord’s divinity and also as his divine humanity (discussed in §§2833, 2836, 3251) and from the symbolism of my servant, where it describes the Lord, as his divine humanity. Not that his divine humanity is a servant, because it too is Jehovah (1736, 2156, 2329, 2921, 3023, 3035), but that the Lord served the human race through it. By it we are saved, as we never could have been had the Lord not united his humanity with his divinity, enabling us to mentally gaze on and worship his human side and in this way approach his divine side. Our union with divinity itself, called the Father, takes place through the divine humanity, called the Son. So it takes place through the Lord, whom spiritual people take to mean his humanity but heavenly people take to mean divinity itself. Clearly, then, the Lord’s divine humanity is called a servant because it serves his divinity by providing us with access to it and because it serves the human race by saving us. That is what Abraham my servant symbolizes. . . .
-
Eksik bölüm mü var?
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
2799:5
In Hosea: I will strike a pact with them on that day—with the wild animal of the field, and with the bird in the heavens and the creeping animal of the ground. And bow and sword and war I will break off from the earth, and I will make them lie down securely. (Hosea 2:18) This is about the Lord’s kingdom. Breaking bow, sword, and war means that no one there fights over doctrine or truth.
3242:1
Here is how matters stand with a person who focuses on the truth taught by faith: None are allowed into the Lord’s kingdom but those who have the goodness taught by faith, because the goodness taught by faith has to do with life. A religious life stays with us [after death], but religious doctrine does not, unless it is integrated into our life. Still, people who focus on the truth of faith (that is, who champion faith and describe it as essential, because that is how they have been taught) but live good lives (that is, are Christian at heart, not just on their lips) are in the Lord’s spiritual kingdom.
2873
For this reason, we are all distinguished from each other in the next life according to our type of freedom. To put the same thing another way, we are distinguished according to what we love and are affected by. Consequently, we are distinguished according to the pleasures of our life, which is the same as saying we are distinguished according to our life.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3324:4
People who have no love for others cannot acknowledge the Lord, so they cannot acknowledge religious truth. If they claim to believe, they are being either superficial or hypocritical (2354). There is absolutely no faith without neighborly love (654, 1162, 1176, 2417).
3325:3
In the church, though, there are more people who are not regenerating than who are, and people who are not regenerating draw conclusions on the basis of appearances. So there was a controversy going back to ancient times about the relative priority of truth and goodness. The prevailing opinion among people who had not been reborn (and among people who had not been fully reborn) was that truth came first. They were not yet able to perceive what was good, and as long as we cannot perceive goodness, we live in shadows of ignorance on the subject. People who have been reborn, though, are actually immersed in goodness, which brings them understanding and wisdom, so they are able to discern what is good. They can also tell that what is good comes from the Lord, that it flows in by way of the inner self into the outer, that it flows in constantly, without any awareness on our part, that it links up with doctrinal truth in the memory, and consequently that goodness by its very nature is prior, even though it had not seemed so before.
3412:2
Here is the situation with deep truth that comes from the Divine and is wiped out by the people called Philistines: In the ancient church and after its time, “Philistines” referred to people who had little energy for learning how to live but a great deal of energy for learning theology. Eventually they even rejected life issues and acknowledged belief issues as the essence of the church, detaching them from life.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3304:2
Goodness but not truth is born into humans, with the result that babies lack any knowledge of truth. Truth has to be learned and then united with goodness.
3321:3
As a consequence of these facts and others, our earthly self accepts truth much later and with much more difficulty than our rational self does. The result is combat, which lasts quite a long time and does not end until the vessels in our earthly self for receiving goodness have been softened by inward trial, as shown above in §3318. Truth is just a vessel for receiving goodness (§§1496, 1832, 1900, 2063, 2261, 2269), and the vessel becomes harder the more rigid we are about truth. . . . The more rigid we are, the heavier the battle, if we are to be reborn. Accordingly, since this is what happens in the earthly self to unite truth with goodness there, and it is accomplished through the struggles of inward trial, the biblical text repeats I’m worn out.
3254
The reason it is newness or a new stage that old age symbolizes on an inner level is that angels (the intended audience of the Word’s inner meaning) have no idea of time. So they know nothing of time-related concepts such as the different eras of a person’s life—childhood, youth, young adulthood, full adulthood, and old age. Instead they replace them all with the idea of states. For the period of childhood they picture an innocent state; for the period of youth and young adulthood, a state of desire for goodness and truth; for full adulthood, a state of understanding; and for old age, a state of wisdom (§3183). In old age we pass from temporal concerns to the concerns of timeless life and therefore put on a new state. As a result, old age symbolizes newness.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3368:3
Let me explain the secret behind the command not to go down into Egypt but to stay as an immigrant in the land of Gerar—that is, not to focus on facts but on rational thinking: All appearances of truth containing something divine belong to the rational level—so much so that rational ideas are the same as appearances of truth. Facts, though, belong to the earthly level—so much so that earthly ideas are the same as factual truth. Rational truth, or appearances of truth, can exist and emerge only from an inflow from the Divine into the rational dimension and through rational ideas into the facts occupying the earthly dimension. The resulting activity on the rational level shows up on the earthly level like the image of a busy scene reflected in a mirror. That is how it presents itself to us and also to angels. The earthly image is not as conspicuous to an angel as it is to those in the world of spirits and those on a spiritual-earthly level.#3368:3.a+ So the latter two groups have truth represented to them.
3175:1
This is how the case stands: We are never born into any truth, not even into any earthly truth, such as the idea that we should not steal, not kill, not commit adultery, and so on. Still less are we born into any spiritual truth, such as the idea that there is a God, or that we have a deeper part that will live on after death. So on our own we know nothing about eternal life. Earthly and spiritual truth are things we learn. If we did not learn them, we would be much worse than brute animals. By heredity, we love ourselves above all others and long to own everything in the world. That is why we need to be restrained by civil laws and the fear of losing our position, wealth, reputation, and life. Otherwise we would steal, kill, and commit adultery without the least twinge of conscience. This is obviously the case, because even the educated do such things without remorse and in fact defend the practice, offering many justifications for acting that way, so far as they can get away with it. What would they refrain from if they had not been educated?
2851:3
There are two paths that lead to a person’s rational mind: a higher or more inward path that gives access to goodness and truth from the Lord, and a lower or more outward path through which evil and falsity sneak in from hell. The rational mind itself lies at the meeting-point of the two paths. In the Word, this level of the mind is compared to and called a city, on account of the goodness and truth present in it. Since it is compared to and called a city, gates are marked out for it, and enemies—evil demons and spirits—are described in many passages as besieging or attacking it. Angels from the Lord, which is to say, the Lord himself, are described as defending it. Hellish demons and spirits, with their evils and falsities, cannot go beyond the lower or shallower gate; they never enter the city. If they could enter the city (our rational mind), that would be the end of us. When they advance far enough that it looks to them as though they have captured the city, it is closed, so that goodness and truth can no longer flow into it from heaven. Just a small bit seeps in through cracks all around, as just mentioned.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3122:1
More about this truth that means charity: The very earliest people, who were heavenly, understood the mercy and truth worked by the Lord in them to be simply an acceptance of the love for the Lord and the resulting charity toward others that flow into a person. The ancients, who were spiritual, understood the mercy and truth worked by the Lord in them to be charity and faith. The reason for the discrepancy is that heavenly people never thought about matters of faith, or truth, but about matters of love, or goodness. This can be seen from previous remarks about heavenly people, §§202, 337, 2669, 2715. And charity for their neighbor introduced heavenly people into love for the Lord, when they were being reformed and reborn. It is plain, then, that the mercy done by the Lord actually means a perception of an inflowing love for him, and that truth actually means a perception of an inflowing charity for our neighbor that results from it.
2917
The Lord emerges from . . . night and rises again in us when we acknowledge him. Until then, we experience nighttime, because we cannot see him. He rises again in everyone who is reborn.
2768
To say that God tested Abraham . . . is to speak in harmony with the literal text, which ascribes our times of trial and other hardships to God. To speak in harmony with the inner meaning, though, is to say that God never tests anyone. At such times he is constantly delivering us from our struggles, so far as he can, which is to say, so far as freeing us does no harm. At the same time he is constantly focusing on the goodness to which he can lead us when we are being tested. Otherwise he would never consent to it. Although it is fair to say he allows us to be tested, his permission does not work the way we think it does—that when he allows something, he approves of it. Humans find it impossible to grasp that any of us could permit what we do not will, but it is the evil in us that causes this. It is also the evil in us that brings on our crises, for which God is not the least bit responsible.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3350:2
Then I heard numerous choirs putting forth various representations, and even though there were many choirs and many in each choir, they acted as one. The forms of the various contributions combined into a single whole filled with heavenly beauty.
The same effect can be produced by the entirety of heaven, populated as it is by millions and millions, who act in unison because they love each other, since as a result they allow the Lord to lead them. Amazingly, the more there are—the more millions there are—to populate heaven, the more distinct and perfect everything becomes.
2780
Peaceful conditions in the heavens resemble the mood of dawn on the earth. Everything heavenly and spiritual in the heavens exists in a state of peace, which is what gives all of it its charm, blessing, and happiness. In the same way, at the time of dawn on earth, everything displays itself to us as pleasant and cheerful. Individual details draw their character from the general mood. . . . The case is the same with a state of innocence. It emerges under peaceful conditions and is a general mood affecting everything involved in love and faith. Unless the various facets of love and faith have innocence within them, they lack their essential ingredient. That is why no one can go to heaven without possessing some innocence (Mark 10:15).
3255:1
When people died, the ancients customarily said they were gathered to their ancestors, or to their people, by which they meant that they literally went to their parents and other close and distant relations in the other world. This saying was one they received from the earliest people, who were a heavenly race. While the earliest people were living on earth, they were also present with angels in heaven, so they knew how matters stood. They knew that everyone who shares the same kind of goodness meets in the other life and lives together, as does everyone who shares the same truth. The former they would describe as being gathered to their ancestors. . . , but the latter, to their people.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3215
The representative objects that present themselves to spirits come in unbelievable variety, but most of them resemble objects that exist on the earth in its three kingdoms.
3214
Scenes representing what is spiritual and heavenly sometimes occur in a long series, lasting an hour or two, one after another, in an order that is astounding. There are certain communities in which this happens, and I was allowed to stay in them for many months. The representations are such that if I were to narrate and describe the chain of events in just one of them, it would fill many pages. The scenes are intensely pleasing, because something new and unexpected always comes next, and this keeps happening until the phenomenon being represented has been brought to perfect completion. When everything is complete, the viewer is able to take it all in at a single glance and at the same time to sense what the individual pieces of it symbolize.
This is another way good spirits are introduced into spiritual and heavenly thinking.
3417:3
[3] So people who know religious concepts but do not live a life of love for others cannot see that any pleasure exists besides that which results from supremacy. It monopolizes their minds and constitutes their whole life. Consequently they are completely unacquainted with the heavenly satisfaction that comes of humility and the desire to help others—that is, with the joy of love for the Lord and charity for their neighbor—and with the bliss and happiness these produce. For that reason, the Lord accommodated to their weaknesses when he spoke, so that by this means they could be stirred up and led to learn, teach, and do good. All the same, he teaches what importance and prestige in heaven really are . . .
[After death] we do admittedly become relatively great, important, powerful, and imperial, since a single angel is stronger than many thousands of hellish spirits. But the power comes from the Lord, not ourselves.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
2960:2
Ephron said, “The field I give you; and the cave that is in it—to you I give it” (verse 11). These words meant that they wanted to prepare themselves on their own, so far as the requirements of religion and faith went, or in other words, to reform themselves. This is what the first stage is like for people who are reforming (see §2946). When they learn more truth, or more about the faith, however, they reach a second stage, in which they agree [to let the Lord reform them] but still want to do it themselves. That is the stage the current verse focuses on, but a third is soon depicted, in which they really believe that the Lord reforms them.
[2] . . . the reasons why they still want to reform themselves—even when they progress in their knowledge of truth (or faith) and acknowledge that the Lord does it—are these: The cloud of ignorance breaks up only gradually. It takes time to confirm and strengthen the truth. And goodness is perfected as we absorb knowledge of the truth. Real goodness, which forms the receiving ground for truth, enables us not only to acknowledge but even to believe that the Lord is the one who reforms us. This stage is the third, and a fourth follows it: We actually perceive that the Lord does the reforming. There are not many who reach this stage during bodily life, because it is an angelic one, but people who have been reborn enter it in the other world.
3286:2–3
[2] With human beings the case is this: When we are being reborn, the Lord instills goodness—benevolence toward our neighbor—into our rational mind, and into this benevolence, or goodness, he introduces truth brought up out of our earthly self. At that point our earthly level has not yet been reborn, and we can recognize the fact from our inner or rational self’s frequent battles with our outward or earthly self. As long as they fight, our earthly part is not regenerate, and when it is not regenerate, the truth we have in our rational part is infertile. As in general, so in every particular: on any issue over which our rational thinking conflicts with our earthly thinking, the truth in our rational mind is said to be barren.
[3] The main thing on which the work of regeneration hinges is the effort to bring our earthly self into correspondence with our rational self, not only as a whole but also in particular, and it is through our rationality that the Lord reduces our earthly self into correspondence. His method is to instill goodness into our rational mind, plant seeds of truth in the soil of that goodness, and then through rational truth reduce the earthly plane to obedience. When it obeys, it corresponds; and the more it corresponds, the more we are reborn.
2979:2, 3
This is how matters stand with the rebirth of spiritual people: First they learn the true ideas that belong to faith, and from then on the Lord maintains in them a desire for truth. The goodness that faith calls for, which is charity toward their neighbor, is instilled in them at the same time, but in such a way that they hardly realize it, since it hides within their desire for truth. The purpose is for truth, which belongs to faith, to unite with goodness, which belongs to charity. As time passes, their desire for the truth belonging to faith grows, and they look to truth for the sake of the goal, which is goodness, or (to put it another way) life. This they do more and more. In this way, truth is instilled into goodness, and when that happens, their life becomes steeped in goodness that accords with the truth instilled into it. So they act (or seem to themselves to act) out of goodness. Up till this time, the truth constituting faith is the most important consideration to them, but afterward, the goodness constituting life is. When the two switch, the person has been reborn.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3474:1
A spirit came to me not long after he had left his body. (This I could tell from the fact that he did not yet realize he was in the other life but believed he was still living in the world.) I sensed that he had devoted his time to intellectual pursuits, which I discussed with him, but then to my amazement he suddenly soared into the air. I decided he was the type of person whose ambitions had been lofty (since people like this usually rise into the air) or that he thought heaven was high in the sky. (This kind of person too is usually raised aloft, in order to learn that heaven is not up high but deep within.) I soon perceived, though, that he had been lifted up to a group of angelic spirits positioned a little out in front and to the right, on the first threshold of heaven. He then spoke to me from there, saying that he was seeing sights grander than the human mind could ever conceive. While this was happening, I was reading in the first chapter of Deuteronomy about the Jewish people, specifically the ones sent to scout out the land of Canaan and all that it held. As I was reading it, he said that he caught none of the literal meaning but only the contents of the spiritual meaning, which were too astounding to describe. This occurred on the very threshold of the angelic spirits’ heaven. What would it be like in their heaven proper, or in the heaven of true angels?
3416
And Isaac went from there means that the Lord abandoned deeper truth. . . .
That the Lord abandons deep truth means that he does not reveal it to people. Inward truth is present throughout the Word, but we do not even see it when we read the Word if we are the type that knows religious concepts without living by them. This becomes clear from the fact that people who consider faith the key to salvation do not notice what the Lord repeatedly said about love and charity. Any who do notice call [good deeds] the fruits of faith, distinguishing and even separating them from charity, whose nature they do not know. So they see the Word from the back, not the front; in other words, they see its surface, not what is inside it. To see the back, or the outside, without the front, or the inside, is not to see anything divine in it.
That is what it means to say that the Lord abandoned deep truth, symbolized by Isaac’s going from there. Not that the Lord abandons it, but that people remove themselves from the Lord, because they remove themselves from anything that affects their life.
3305:2
Readers who stick to the literal meaning believe that when the Word mentions Jacob, it means the whole people descended from Jacob. In consequence, they attribute to that people everything the Word says about Jacob, whether as narrative or as prophecy. The Word is divine, though—mainly because everything in it relates not to one nation or one people but to the entire human race as it is, as it was, and as it will be.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3228
The themes of the current chapter are: the sons Abraham had by Keturah; Ishmael’s sons, by name; the birth of Esau and Jacob to Isaac and Rebekah; and the birthright Esau sold to Jacob for lentil soup. Anyone can see that material like this is useful as a religious history of the era but provides little for a person’s spiritual life—and yet it is our spiritual life that the Word exists for.
3438:2
I must say a few words to explain more clearly what the case is with the Word’s literal meaning. The inner meaning relates to the literal meaning the way our deeper levels (our heavenly and spiritual planes) relate to our outer levels (our earthly and bodily planes). Our deeper levels bask in heaven’s light, but our outer levels live in worldly light. . . . The difference is like that between the light of day and the shadow of night. Since we live in this shadow and do not want to know that truth from the Lord contains light, we cannot help believing that our shadow is the light and conversely that the light is shadow. We are like owls flying through the shadows of night thinking they are in the light, but when they encounter daylight, they think they are in shadow. In people like this, the inner eye, the eye of the intellect, by which we see inside, is not formed for any other purpose, because such people themselves have formed it this way. They open it when they look down to worldly and bodily concerns and close it when they look up to spiritual and heavenly concerns. For them the Word is similar; what appears in its literal sense they consider full of light, but what appears in its inner sense they consider full of shadow. We each see the Word according to our nature.
3304:3
People who focus on the narrative alone, unable to shift their minds from it, see this phrase and others leading up to it simply as foreshadowing what took place between Esau and Jacob. Subsequent parts of the story confirm them in their view. The Lord’s Word, though, is such that the narratives have their logical sequence and the spiritual contents of the inner meaning have theirs. Our outer self looks at the former; our inner self, at the latter. So the two—the outer self and the inner—correspond to one another, and the Word provides the link. The Word is the union of earth and heaven, as shown many times. So whenever we read the Word reverently, our outer self on earth unites with our inner self in heaven.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3310:4
Only through concepts formed from facts and sense impressions can we corroborate doctrinal truth. Absolutely everything we think about—even the deepest mystery of faith—comes with some earthly, sense-based image, even though we usually have no idea of the true character of that image. In the other life, if we wish, it can be displayed for our minds or even (if we so desire) for our eyes to see. In the other world, such things can be presented to view. This seems unbelievable but is still true.
3425:3
Those who are not defiant act, talk, seek wealth, and indulge in pleasure in the same ways as those who are—so much so that in external appearance they can hardly be told apart. Only their aims differentiate them; to put it another way, only what they love differentiates them (since what we love is our aim). Yet although they look the same in their outward form, or body, they have nothing in common in their inner form, or spirit. People who are in correspondence—whose outer self harmonizes with their inner self—have a spirit that is radiant and beautiful, as heavenly love is when embodied. People who are in opposition—whose outer self resists their inner self—may look the same on the outside, but their spirit is dark and ugly, as self-love and materialism are, or as contempt and hatred are, when embodied.
3080
The reason very good to look at symbolizes beauty—here, the beauty of a desire for truth . . . —is that all beauty comes from goodness that has innocence within it. When the goodness of the inner self acts on the outer self, it actually creates beauty. That is the source of all human beauty.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3200
These two verses depict the condition of goodness on the rational plane when it is waiting for the truth that is to unite with it as a bride with her husband. The next two depict the condition of truth when it comes close and perceives the goodness with which it is to unite.
It is important to know, however, that these stages did not arrive just once but constantly throughout the Lord’s life in the world, up until he was glorified. The same is true in people who are regenerating, because they are not reborn once but constantly throughout their life and even in the other life. After all, we can never become perfect.
3308
Goodness and truth resemble babies, in that they are conceived, grow in the womb, are born, grow up, and increase in age until they reach full maturity. Conception, gestation, and birth belong to their rise; growing up and aging till they reach full maturity belong to their progress. The stage of progress, in which goodness and truth unite, follows birth, and its start is what growing up symbolizes here. This stage begins right after birth and continues all the way to the end of life, and in people devoted to goodness, it continues beyond bodily life to eternity. In other words, angels are always developing.
3296:2
. . . A person’s rebirth mirrors the Lord’s glorification . . . ; in other words, regeneration offers an image of the process by which the Lord glorified his human side, or made it divine. Just as the Lord changed his human condition into an entirely divine one, he completely changes our condition when he regenerates us, since he makes our old self new.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3318:2
A few words are needed to show how matters stand here, specifically how they stand with human beings. A human being is nothing else but an organ or vessel that receives life from the Lord; we do not live on our own. . . . The life that flows into us from the Lord comes from his divine love. This love, or the life that radiates from it, flows in and bestows itself on the vessels in our rational and earthly minds. Such vessels in us face away from the life force because of the evil we inherit by birth and the evil we ourselves acquire by committing it. However, so far as it can do so, the inflowing life repositions the vessels to receive itself.
3316:3
When we read the story and take it literally, the angels then present with us form no picture whatever of soup, of Jacob, of Esau, of a red dish, or of swallowing some of it. Instead they form a spiritual image, which is entirely different, and distant from the earthly one. The earthly image turns into a spiritual one instantly. The same is true with all other images in the Word. For example, when we read about bread there, angels do not picture bread but instantly think of heavenly love (love for the Lord) and its ramifications instead. When we read in the Word about wine, they do not picture wine but rather spiritual love (love for one’s neighbor) and its ramifications. So when we read about soup, they do not picture soup but doctrines that have not yet been united to goodness and therefore the disorder of their arrangement.
This reveals the nature and quality of angels’ thought and perception and the width of the gap between theirs and ours. If we thought this way when doing something reverent like taking Holy Supper—if we perceived love for the Lord in place of bread, and love for our neighbor in place of wine—we would be thinking and perceiving as angels do. They would then come closer and closer to us until eventually we could share thoughts with each other—but only so far as we humans also dedicated ourselves to goodness.
2955
Another reason I will bury my dead one means emerging from . . . spiritual nighttime and coming alive is that when an earlier religion dies, the Lord raises up a new one to replace it. So instead of death there is life, and instead of night there is morning. Yet another reason is that in anyone who is reforming and becoming spiritual the dead part is buried, so to speak, and a new, living part rises again. So in place of the night in such a person, or in place of the dark and cold, morning dawns with its life and warmth.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3463:4
Anyone can see how the case stands . . . simply from this general rule concerning neighborly love: “Everything whatever that you want people to do for you, you do likewise for them” (Matthew 7:12). People who do this by command do good to others but only because it has been ordered, not because their heart seeks it. Whenever they do, they start with themselves, and in doing good they are thinking of their own merit. On the other hand, people who do it not by command but out of neighborly love, or because they want to, are operating from the heart, in freedom. Whenever they act, they start with goodwill itself and therefore with something that gives them pleasure. Since this pleasure is their reward, they do not think of taking credit. From this you can see what the difference is between doing good from faith and doing good from charity.
3469:2.
The inner levels, or rational dimension, have been reborn in people with the goodness that comes of truth (that is, people who live according to doctrine), but not yet their outer levels, or earthly dimension. Our rationality is reborn before our earthly part . . . , because our earthly part lives entirely in the world and acts as a base on which our thought and will are founded. That is why we sense conflict between our rational, inner self and our earthly, outer self when we are regenerating. Our outer part regenerates much later and much more reluctantly than our inner part. Nothing that is close to the world and the body can easily be pressured into offering obedience to the inner self, only over a long period of time. The process also requires us to be introduced by the struggles of spiritual trial into many new stages of acknowledgment about ourselves and the Lord—that we ourselves are pitiful, and the Lord, merciful. So it requires many new stages of humility.
2994
As long as we are living in our body, we are incapable of sensing or perceiving much of this. With us, heavenly and spiritual entities are translated into the earthly attributes of our outer self, and there we lose the ability to sense and perceive them.
Representations and correspondences as they exist in our outer self also do not appear like the traits of our inner self that they correspond to and represent. So these inner traits cannot impinge on our awareness until we shed the outer dimension.
When we do, those of us who are in correspondence—that is, whose outer self corresponds to our inner—are very fortunate.
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3475
There are three heavens. In the first heaven, they see the superficial appearance of an object and perceive what it means on an inner plane. In the second heaven, they see the object as it is in its inner form and perceive what it is like on a still deeper plane. In the third heaven, they see that still deeper form, which is the inmost.
3475 cont’d
Each and every representation involves attributes of the Lord’s kingdom, which involve attributes of the Lord himself. Inhabitants of the first heaven see within their representations the kinds of things that exist in a deeper realm of the kingdom, within which they see those that exist in a still deeper realm. In this way they see those that represent the Lord, but distantly. Inhabitants of the second heaven see within their representations the kinds of things that exist in the deepest realm of the kingdom, within which they see those that represent the Lord more directly. But inhabitants of the third heaven see the Lord himself.
3346
In order for me to learn all this and know it for certain, the Lord in his divine mercy has allowed me to talk with spirits and angels almost continually for many years now. With spirits or angels of the first heaven I have been granted to use their own language, and sometimes with angels of the second heaven I have been granted to use theirs. The speech of angels in the third heaven, though, only presented itself to me as a burst of light in which perception radiated from a blaze of goodness at its core.
-
Eight or nine years ago Sheila Robinson-Kiss happened upon a video of Off The Left Eye and her life was profoundly changed. She went on to buy and study as many of Swedenborg’s books as she could and the ideas in them opened new doors in her heart, mind, and life’s work. In this conversation, we talk about the power of Swedenborg’s revelation and what she’s doing with it to help people heal.
Sheila Robinson-Kiss, MSW, LCSW, is the founder of Rebalancing America and Beyond (RAB) which provides mental health and wellness education to individuals, groups, and organizations online, live, and at conferences. Sheila is an author, an MSNBC featured mental health expert, an award-winning orator, and a social entrepreneur whose work focuses on helping people care for themselves and change their lives through balance and empowered solutions. Learn more at rab.solutions.
★☆★ABOUT★☆★
"Inside Off The Left Eye" is an original podcast offering by the Off The Left Eye team with new material every week coming to you on Sundays, hosted by Chelsea Odhner. We study the historical context of Emanuel Swedenborg's (1688-1772) life and works and share fresh insights from the New Century Edition translation of Swedenborg's theological works. Joined by translator and Series Editor Dr. Jonathan Rose and Off The Left Eye host and personality Curtis Childs, we follow threads into the past, discovering that what we find often is eminently relevant to the present.
Inside Off The Left Eye is a project of the Swedenborg Foundation—a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, independent, educational organization for those seeking to explore spirituality and faith. Learn more at www.swedenborg.com.
★☆★SUPPORT OUR SHOWS★☆★
*MAKE A ONE-TIME OR RECURRING DONATION* See how your generosity directly benefits our channel! https://swedenborg.com/donate/
*BECOME A MEMBER* Support all the work of the Swedenborg Foundation. http://www.swedenborg.com/membership
*SHOP OUR MERCH* 15% of proceeds from our Redbubble store help us continue to offer free spiritual resources just like the videos seen here. http://www.redbubble.com/people/swedenborgfound/shop
★☆★STAY CONNECTED ★☆★
SUBSCRIBE to Inside Off The Left Eye wherever you listen to podcasts.
E-MAIL SIGN-UP - https://offthelefteye.com/subscribe/
FACEBOOK - https://www.facebook.com/SwedenborgFoundation
TWITTER - https://twitter.com/swedenborgfound
-
Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:
3482
Although the language of Scripture seems to us so plainspoken and sometimes unpolished, it is the angelic language itself in its outermost form. When angelic language, which is spiritual, descends into human words, this is the only kind of diction in which it can express itself, because all of its content represents something, and every word symbolizes something. The ancients had no other language, interacting as they did with spirits and angels. It was full of representation and every element of it held spiritual meaning. Their books were written in the same language, because to speak and write this way was the pursuit of their wisdom.
3301:9
The youths who said, “Go on up, you baldhead! Go on up, you baldhead!” to Elisha and were mauled by bears from the forest (2 Kings 2:23, 24) represented people who blaspheme the Word as a work devoid of truth. Elisha represented the Lord as the Word. . . .
From this you can also see how much power representations had at that time.
3061:2
The Lord has existed from eternity, as the Word makes plain . . . , although he was later born in time. After all, he spoke through Moses and the prophets and appeared to many people, and it says there that he was Jehovah. This deep secret, though, cannot be revealed to anyone who does not have divine perception. As a result, it can be revealed to hardly anyone but members of the earliest church, which was heavenly and had divine perception. From them I have heard that Jehovah himself was the Lord in his divine humanity, at the times when he went down into heaven and flowed through heaven. The reason he revealed himself this way is that heaven resembles an individual human being with all the body parts, which is also why it is called the universal human. . . . Divinity itself in heaven, or in the universal human, was the divine human, who was Jehovah himself clothed in this humanity.
- Daha fazla göster
