Afterlife: A Guided Tour of Heaven and Its Wonders - Swedenborg ...

Heaven
There was a kind of angelic face that appeared to me, and
this was varied according to the qualities of affections for
the good and the true that were characteristic of the indi -
vid uals in a particular community. These variations lasted
quite a while, and through it all I noticed that the same
general face remained constant as a basis, with everything
else being simply derivations and elaborations from it. In
this way, too, I was shown the affections of the whole com -
munity that occasioned the differences in the faces of its
members, for as already noted, the faces of angels are their
deeper qualities taking form, which means they are forms
of the affections proper to their love and faith.
We have noted above that there are larger and smaller
com munities in the heavens. The larger ones consist of
tens of thousands of individuals, the smaller of some thou -
sands, and the smallest of hundreds. There are even peo -
ple who live alone, house by house, so to speak, and family
by family. Even though they live apart, they are still
arranged in the same pattern as those who live in commu -
ni ties, with the wiser of them in the center and the simpler
at the periphery. They are very closely under the Lord’s
guidance, and are the best of angels.
Each Community Is a Heaven in Smaller Form
and Each Angel a Heaven in Smallest Form
The reason each community is a heaven in smaller form
and each angel a heaven in smallest form is that the activ -
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