Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 259
332. As soon as little children are resuscitated, which takes
place immediately after death, they are taken into heaven and
confided to angel women who in the life of the body tenderly
loved little children and at the same time loved God. Because
these during their life in the world loved all children with a
kind of motherly tenderness, they receive them as their own;
while the children, from an implanted instinct, love them as
their own mothers. There are as many children in each one’s
care as she desires from a spiritual parental affection. This
heaven appears in front before the forehead, directly in the line
or radius in which the angels look to the Lord. It is so situated
because all little children are under the immediate auspices of
the Lord; and the heaven of innocence, which is the third
heaven, flows into them.
333. Little children have various dispositions, some that of
the spiritual angels and some that of the celestial angels. Those
who are of a celestial disposition are seen in that heaven to the
right, and those of a spiritual disposition to the left. All
children in the Greatest Man, which is heaven, are in the
province of the eyes—those of a spiritual disposition in the
province of the left eye, and those of a celestial disposition in
the province of the right eye. This is because the angels who are
in the spiritual kingdom see the Lord before the left eye, and
those who are in the celestial kingdom before the right eye (see
above, n. 118). This fact that in the greatest man or heaven
children are in the province of the eyes is a proof that they are
under the immediate sight and auspices of the Lord.
334. How children are taught in heaven shall also be briefly
told. From their nurses they learn to talk. Their earliest speech
is simply a sound of affection; this by degrees becomes more
distinct as ideas of thought enter; for ideas of thought from
affections constitute all angelic speech (as may be seen in its
own chapter, n. 234–245). Into their affections, all of which
proceed from innocence, such things as appear before their eyes
and cause delight are first instilled; and as these things are from
a spiritual origin the things of heaven at once flow into them,