Conjugial Love

...if we call them charity In this context, "charity" refers to spiritual love in action, or benevolence toward others., faith, and good works; for charity is love, faith is truth from which wisdom is derived, and good works are uses The term "uses" refers to performing helpful services or functions for the benefit of others and the community.. Moreover, in our spiritual world, there are places just as there are in the natural world; otherwise, there could be no dwellings or distinct homes. Nevertheless, a "place" for us is not a physical location, but an appearance of place according to one's state of love and wisdom, or of charity and faith.

Everyone who becomes an angel carries his own heaven within himself, because he carries the love of his own heaven in his heart. From creation, a human being is the smallest original: "effigy"; meaning a perfect representation or likeness. image and model of the great heaven, and the human form is nothing else but this. Therefore, after death, everyone enters the specific heavenly society whose general form they represent as an individual. Consequently, when he enters that society, he enters a form that matches his own; it is as if he passes out of himself into that form as if into another self, and then back from that other self into the same form within himself. He enjoys his own life as part of the society's life, and the society's life within his own. Every society in heaven may be considered as one single body, and the angels who compose it are like its individual parts, from which the whole body exists. It follows from this that those who live in evil, and consequently in falsehoods original: "falses"; referring to false beliefs or principles that arise from an evil heart., have formed within themselves a representation of hell. Such a person suffers torment in heaven because of the influence and violent conflict of one opposite against another; for infernal love is the opposite of heavenly love. Consequently, the delights of those two loves are in a state of conflict and enmity, and whenever they meet, they try to destroy each other."

11. After this, a voice was heard from heaven, saying to the angel who had the trumpet, "Select ten people from the whole assembly and introduce them to us. We have heard from the Lord that He will prepare them so that the heat and light—or the love and wisdom—of our heaven will not harm them for a period of three days."

Ten people were then selected and followed the angel. They climbed a steep path up a certain hill, and from there up a mountain, on the summit of which was located the heaven of those angels, which had earlier appeared to them from a distance like an expanse in the clouds. The gates were opened for them; and after they had passed the third gate, the guiding angel hurried to the prince of the society—the leader of that heaven—and announced their arrival.

The prince said, "Take some of my attendants and tell the visitors that their arrival is welcome to me. Lead them into my reception room, provide each one with a separate suite and a bedroom, and appoint some of my staff and servants to wait on them and attend to their wishes." All of this was done. After being introduced by the angel, the visitors asked whether they might go and see the prince. The angel replied, "It is now morning, and it is not permitted before noon. Until that time, everyone is busy with their own specific duties and work. However, you are invited to dinner, and then you will sit at the table with our prince."