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

AFTERLIFE
ity of love and faith is what makes heaven. This good
activ ity is in every community of heaven and in every
angel of a community. It does not matter that this activity
is different and distinctive everywhere, it is still the
activity of heaven. The only difference is that heaven has
one activity here and another there. So whenever anyone
is raised into any community of heaven, they say that they
are in heaven, each in his or her own. All the people who
have arrived in the other life realize this; so individuals
who are standing outside or below heaven and looking off
into the distance where there is a gathering of angels say
that heaven is there—and over there as well.
Just as a whole community is a heaven in lesser form, so
too an angel is a heaven in least form. For heaven is not
out side angels but within them. Their deeper levels, the
lev els of their minds, are arranged in the form of heaven
and there fore are arranged to accept all the elements of
heaven that are outside them. These elements they
accept accord ing to the quality of the goodness that is
within them from the Lord. As a result, an angel is also a
heaven.
It can never be said that heaven is outside anyone. It is
within; because every angel accepts the heaven that is
out side in keeping with the heaven that is within. We can
see, then, how mistaken people are who think that getting
into heaven is simply a matter of being taken up among
the angels, regardless of the quality of their inner life, who
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