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9. The World of Spirits, Heaven and Hell
By Kurt Simons | June 6, 2007
The teachings of the Second Coming provide a great deal of information about life after death. A sample of the subjects covered:
How the spiritual aspects of the death process work.
The World of Spirits, intermediate between heaven and hell, is where we first awake after death and make final preparations for going to heaven or hell.
God appears in heaven as the spiritual sun, radiating love and truth, just as the physical sun radiates the heat and light to which love and truth correspond.
Heaven is in many respects just like our present world, though much more beautiful, with mountains and valleys, towns and houses, beautiful parks and rivers.
In heaven we receive a new spiritual body, which is healthy and in the prime of life.
Angels do not just sit around all day. They, like us, are most happy when they are being useful, and they do a far wider range of useful activities than we can even imagine on earth.
Heaven is organized into a large number of communities, each community made up of people with similar interests in life that are different from those of all the other communities.
[”T]he priesthood of heaven is the celestial kingdom.” (Heaven and Hell 226) In other words, in the highest heaven, which provides the priesthood for all of heaven, there is a priesthood of all believers.
Daily life in heaven and hell.
Marriage in heaven.
What happens to children after death.
The uses of hell.
How, while we’re in the physical world, our spirits interact with a continuing stream of angels and evil spirits as our thoughts and moods change, although we are usually not conscious of them.
Many Second Coming teachings are quite different from what has been expected, such as:
Neither belonging to a church organization nor simply believing in God will get us to heaven.
Free will ends at death.
We each choose to go to heaven or hell on the basis of the spiritual character we have developed during our lifetime. In other words, we “judge” ourselves. People with heavenly characters love to be in heaven; those with hellish characters literally can’t stand being in heaven and like being in hell.
People go to hell of their own free will and, also in free will, stay there to eternity. If we weren’t free to go to hell, then we would just be robots pre-programmed by God to live the life He forced us to live, making going to heaven meaningless.
The “burning” in hell (e.g. Revelation 18: 9, 19: 20) is symbolic, in keeping with such ideas as “burning” hatred or lust. The true horror of hell is eternal frustration. All people want to continue developing on the spiritual path they have begun. The angels can do that into eternity. The inhabitants of hell, however, are not allowed to get worse than they already are. Evil is spiritual insanity, and spirits in hell can never fully live out their insane fantasies. So, again, they are literally eternally frustrated.
Far from being ghostly, life in the spiritual world is more real and vivid than life here. We have a body just like we did here, but it is young and healthy and reflects what we’re truly like better than our physical body ever does. And there are mountains and rivers and cities and towns and many other aspects of life we’re familiar with, but, if we go to heaven, all much better than what we know here on earth.
There is no “death do us part” in true marriage. Angels are married - one man and one woman, husband and wife - forever. If we do not meet your eternal partner in this world, we will in the next.
Communication in the spiritual world takes place directly in the language of ideas, so that everyone understands everyone else. This happened here on earth briefly when spiritual awareness was opened for the people of the Pentecost miracle.
Travel is much faster in the spiritual world than here. Indeed, in most cases it is virtually instantaneous. It requires only thinking of where you want to be or who you want to see and you’re there.
For Further Reading
Pertinent books of the Second Coming
Arcana Coelestia. The heavenly arcana contained in the Holy Scripture or Word of the Lord unfolded, beginning with the book of Genesis together with wonderful things seen in the World of Spirits and in the heaven of angels - Contains many teachings about life after death, interspersed with many other topics.
Heaven and its Wonders and Hell From Things Heard and Seen - Largely drawn from the Arcana, with the teachings in more compact form.
Other Titles
E. Markham. “How I Think of Immortality” - A famous poet’s inspiring reflections on why there really has to be a heaven.
C. Giles. The Nature of Spirit and Man as a Spiritual Being - Another of Giles’ uplifting and carefully thought-out reviews, in this case on the question of just what spiritual reality is, and its implication for the nature of Heaven and Hell.
C. Giles. Children in Heaven - A brief and comforting review of the teachings of the Second Coming on this subject.
To Chapter 9a: The Death Process
June 17th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
You wrote above that free will ends at death. That is not how I understood Swedenborg. My understanding was that freedom and rationality are what make us human. I also understand that God never takes away these two abilities because to do so would be to destroy our humanity. Our spiritual fate in the afterlife is therefore “determined” not by the removal of freedom, but rather by the permanent selection of our life’s love. If our life’s love is the Lord, then we pursue this freely and rationally for eternity. If our life’s love is ourselves, then we freely pursue our evils in our distorted reasoning.
June 18th, 2007 at 9:37 am
I was attempting to get across in a simple and straightforward way that after death you can no longer change your ruling love. But, being precise, you are certainly correct. The angels continue in true freedom:
“Doing evil from freedom appears like freedom, when yet it is bondage, because it is the freedom which arises from the love of self and the love of the world, and these loves are from hell. After death, such freedom also is actually turned into bondage, for then the man who has been in such freedom becomes in hell a base slave. But doing good from freedom constitutes freedom itself, because it proceeds from love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour, and these loves are from heaven. This freedom also remains after death, and then becomes real freedom; for the man who has possessed it becomes in heaven like a son of the house. This the Lord teaches in what follows (John viii. 34-36), ‘Whosoever committeth sin is the bond-servant of sin. And the bond-servant abideth not in the house for ever; the Son abideth for ever. If, therefore, the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.’ Now, because all good is from the Lord, and all evil from hell, it follows, that freedom consists in being led by the Lord, and bondage in being led by hell.” (New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine 142)
June 19th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Then, if I may, I would suggest that you edit that line to read something like, “Spiritual life continues for eternity, but the direction of your earthly life at the time of your death establishes its goal for eternity, either toward Heaven or into hell.”
Hmmmm…I see what you mean, it is indeed difficult to state Swedenborg’s ideas any more simply than he has already done. I have to say you are doing a very good job of it.