Most people are familiar with Albert Einstein’s famous equation,
e=mc2. But how many know what it means, and why it’s so important?
The meaning is actually pretty straightforward. The “e” stands for energy; the “m” stands for mass; the “c” stands for the speed of light. So it means that a given bit of mass – a grain of sand, say – could be converted into a specific amount of energy. This was proven over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; small amounts of uranium were converted into massive amounts of energy, enough to destroy cities, end a war and launch the nuclear age.
That, obviously, is enough on its own to make Einstein’s insight important. But there’s a much deeper implication: The equation means that mass and energy are in essence the same thing, that mass – the physical stuff our world is made of – is actually large amounts of energy trapped in small amounts of space. So the entire universe is made of energy, and the staggering variety of material we observe is really just a variety of forms and shapes that energy takes. In fact, we ourselves, our physical bodies, are collections of energy trapped into layers and layers of substances that can collectively support our functions.
That’s a strange, counter-intuitive idea, but it has been the basis of science ever since. Its truth has been borne out in many ways, including the bizarre behavior of sub-atomic particles, which tend to act like mass and energy both at the same time. It’s also inherent in the idea of the Big Bang, the moment that the universe ballooned into existence out of nothingness: It was an unfathomable release of energy that first took form as space itself and time itself, and then eventually clumped into forms as stars, planets and people. So not only is all the stuff in the universe made of energy, but the universe itself -- and reality itself -- are the product of energy.It is essentially all about pure energy.
So what does this have to do with Divine Love? Maybe a lot. A century and a half before Einstein revolutionized our ideas of physical reality, Swedenborg described a spiritual reality with startling similarities. It is a reality based on the idea of pure energy expanding to create the universe. Because of its very nature, that energy tends to clump and create forms and patterns that are solid and unique. Those forms are made of that initial energy and sustained by it, with no life of their own – but as forms they are separate, with their own identity. They are of the energy, but are not part of the energy, if that makes sense.
As you may have guessed, that pure spiritual energy is Divine Love, the actual being and essence of the Lord and the fundamental substance of spiritual reality. And those forms with their unique identities are people – something created and enlivened by the Lord but separate, so that he can love them without loving himself.
Swedenborg’s works offer boundless details about how this all works. Most fundamentally, Divine Love expressed is Divine Wisdom, and the two are one in the Lord. Expression is important both because it creates forms -- which allow for the existence of things that are NOT the Lord -- and because in its essence Divine Love is so blindingly powerful that it would destroy us if we received it directly. So it is filtered by Divine Wisdom into the first of all forms: what Swedenborg calls Divine Truth. That form is so bright and powerful that it is the actual sun of the spiritual world, and is filtered and refiltered into more and more external forms until eventually it becomes a form of love that we can receive (much as we now live on a planet far enough from the sun to be cool enough for us to survive).
Swedenborg’s “Divine Love and Wisdom” also offers this beautiful description of what love is: “The hallmark of love is not loving ourselves but loving others and being united to them through love. The hallmark of love is also being loved by others because this is how we are united. Truly, the essence of all love is to be found in union, in the life of love that we call joy, delight, pleasure, sweetness, blessedness, contentment, and happiness. The essence of love is that what is ours should belong to someone else. Feeling the joy of someone else as joy within ourselves – that is loving.”
That is how the Lord loves us, and his only desire is to have us receive his love more fully so we can be joined with him and brought into the greatest happiness. If we think of that in terms of ourselves as patterns in the fabric of spiritual reality, it would be aligning that pattern with the grain of the fabric, so that the Lord’s love can enter into our very fibers.
Passages from Swedenborg
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 4
4. God alone--the Lord--is love itself, because he is life itself. Both we on earth and angels are life-receivers. I will be offering many illustrations of this in works on divine providence and life. Here I would say only that the Lord, who is the God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite, while we and angels are created and finite. Since the Lord is uncreated and infinite, he is that essential reality that is called Jehovah and is life itself or life in itself. No one can be created directly from the Uncreated, the Infinite, from Reality itself and Life itself, because what is divine is one and undivided. We must be created out of things created and finite, things so formed that something divine can dwell within. Since we and angels are of this nature, we are life-receivers. So if we let ourselves be misled in thought so badly that we think we are not life-receivers but are actually life, there is no way to keep us from thinking that we are God.
Our sense that we are life and our consequent belief that we are life rests on an illusion: in an instrumental cause, the presence of its principal cause is only felt as something identical to itself. The Lord himself teaches that he is life in itself in John: "As the Father has life in himself, so too he has granted the Son to have life in himself" (John 5:26); and again in John (11:25 and 14:6) he teaches that he is life itself. Since life and love are one and the same, as we can see from the first two sections above, it follows that the Lord, being life itself, is love itself.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 5
5. If this is to be intelligible, though, it is essential to realize that the Lord, being love in its very essence or divine love, is visible to angels in heaven as a sun; that warmth and light flow from that sun; that the outflowing warmth is essentially love and the outflowing light essentially wisdom; and that to the extent that angels are receptive of that spiritual warmth and spiritual light, they themselves are instances of love and wisdom--instances of love and wisdom not on their own, but from the Lord.
Spiritual warmth and spiritual light flow into and affect not only angels but also us, precisely to the extent that we become receptive. Our receptivity develops in proportion to our love for the Lord and our love for our neighbor.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 37
37. As divine providence works for our reformation, regeneration, and salvation, it shares equally in divine love and divine wisdom. We cannot be reformed, regenerated, and saved by any excess of divine love over divine wisdom or by any excess of divine wisdom over divine love. Divine love wants to save everyone, but it can do so only by means of divine wisdom. All the laws that govern salvation are laws of divine wisdom, and love cannot transcend those laws because divine love and divine wisdom are one and act in unison.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 34
34. Divine love is a property of divine wisdom, and divine wisdom is a property of divine love. On the divine reality and the divine manifestation being distinguishably one in the Divine-Human One, see 14-16 above. Since the divine reality is divine love and the divine manifestation is divine wisdom, these latter are similarly distinguishably one.
We refer to them as "distinguishably one" because love and wisdom are two distinguishable things, and yet they are so united that love is a property of wisdom and wisdom a property of love. Love finds its reality in wisdom, and wisdom finds its manifestation in love. Further, since wisdom derives its manifestation from love (as noted in 15 [14] above), divine wisdom is reality as well. It follows from this that love and wisdom together are the divine reality, though when they are distinguished we call love the divine reality and wisdom the divine manifestation. This is the quality of the angelic concept of divine loveand wisdom.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 358
358. Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love
Part 5
The Lord has created and formed within us two vessels and dwellings for himself called volition and discernment. Volition is for his divine love and discernment for his divine wisdom. I have already discussed the divine loveand wisdom of God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity, and I have discussed the creation of the universe. Now I need to say something about our own creation.
We read that we were created in the image of God and according to his likeness (Genesis 1:26). In this passage "the image of God" means divine wisdom and "the likeness of God" means divine love, since wisdom is nothing more than the image of love. Love actually presents itself to view and to recognition in wisdom, and since that is where we see and recognize it, wisdom is its image. Then too, love is the reality of life and wisdom is its consequent manifestation. This "image and likeness" of God is strikingly visible in angels. Love shining from within is their faces and wisdom in their beauty, with beauty as the form of their love. I have seen this, and I have come to know it.
Divine Love (Mongredien) n. 3
3. [5.] III
LIFE, WHICH IS DIVINE LOVE, IS IN A FORM
The Divine Love which is Life Itself, is not love simply, but is the Divine proceeding forth, and the Divine proceeding forth is the Lord Himself. The Lord is indeed in the sun that is seen by angels in the heavens, from which goes forth love as heat, and wisdom as light; nevertheless, the love together with the wisdom is also Himself outside of the Sun; distance is only the appearance, for the Divine is not in space, but is "without spatial distance" (indistans), as said above.* The reason there appears to be distance, is that the Divine Love, such as it is in the Lord, cannot be received by an angel, for in itself being more ardent than the fire of the world's sun, angels would be consumed by it. On this account it is successively lessened in intensity by means of infinite circumvolutions, until, tempered and accommodated, it at length reaches the angels, who in addition are veiled by a thin cloud lest they should suffer injury from its ardour. This is the reason for what appears like distance between the Lord as a Sun and heaven where angels are; it is still the Lord Himself present in heaven, but suitably for His being received.
Divine Providence (Rogers) n. 1
1. Divine Providence is the Government of the Lord's Divine Love and Wisdom
To understand what Divine Providence is -- that it is the government of the Lord's Divine love and wisdom -- one ought to know what we said and showed previously concerning Divine love and wisdom in a treatise on that subject, namely the following:
That in the Lord Divine love is a property of Divine wisdom, and Divine wisdom a property of Divine love, nos. 34-39.
That Divine love and wisdom cannot but be and have expression in others it creates, nos. 47-51.
That everything in the universe has been created by Divine love and wisdom, nos. 52, 53, 151-156.
That everything in the universe is a recipient of Divine love and wisdom, nos. 55-60.
That the Lord appears to angels as the sun, and that the heat emanating from that sun is love, and the light emanating from it is wisdom, nos. 83-088, 89-92, 93-98, 296-301.
That the Divine love and wisdom which emanate from the Lord are united, nos. 99-102.
That the Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created the universe and everything in it from Himself and not from nothing, nos. 282-284, 290-295.
Discussions of these points may be found in our treatise titled Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Divine Wisdom.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 99
99. The spiritual warmth and light that result from the emanation from the Lord as the sun form a single whole just as his divine love and wisdom do. Part 1 explains how divine love and wisdom form a single whole in the Lord. Warmth and light form a similar whole because they are emanations, and emanations constitute a whole by reason of their correspondence. The warmth answers to love, and the light to wisdom.
It therefore follows that since divine love is the divine reality and divine wisdom is the divine manifestation (see 14-16 above), spiritual warmth is divinity emanating from the divine reality and spiritual light is divinity emanating from the divine manifestation. This means that just as divine love is a property of divine wisdom and divine wisdom is a property of divine love because of this union (see 34-39 above), spiritual warmth is a property of spiritual light and spiritual light is a property of spiritual warmth. As a result of this kind of oneness, it follows that warmth and light are a single whole as they emanate from the Lord as the sun.
We will see later, though [125], that they are not accepted as a single whole by angels or by us.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 33
33. All human feelings and thoughts arise from the divine love and wisdom that constitute the very essence that is God. The feelings arise from divine love and the thoughts from divine wisdom. Further, every single bit of our being is nothing but feeling and thought. These two are like the springs of everything that is alive in us. They are the source of all our life experiences of delight and enchantment, the delight from the prompting of our love and the enchantment from our consequent thought.
Since we have been created to be recipients, then, and since we are recipients to the extent that we love God and are wise because of our love for God (that is, the extent to which we are moved by what comes from God and think as a result of that feeling), it therefore follows that the divine essence, the Creatress, is divinelove and wisdom.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 44
44. Divine love and wisdom are substance and form in and of themselves, and are therefore wholly "itself" and unique. I have just given evidence that divinelove and wisdom is substance and form, and I have also said that the divine reality and its manifestation is reality and manifestation in and of itself. We cannot say that it is reality and manifestation derived from itself, because that would involve a beginning, a beginning from something else that had within it some intrinsic reality and manifestation; while true reality and its manifestation in and of itself exists from eternity. Then too, true reality and manifestation in and of itself is uncreated; and nothing that has been created can exist except from something uncreated. What is created is also finite; and what is finite can arise only from what is infinite.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 154
154. The reason the Lord created the universe and everything in it by means of the spiritual world's sun is that this sun is the first emanation of divine love and wisdom, and as explained above (52-82), everything comes from divine love and wisdom.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 93
93. That sun is not God. Rather, it is an emanation from the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. The same is true of warmth and light from that sun. "The sun that angels see" (the sun that gives them warmth and light) does not mean the Lord himself. It means that first emanation from him that is the highest form of spiritual warmth. The highest form of spiritual warmth is spiritual fire, which is divine love and wisdom in its first correspondential form. This is why that sun looks fiery and also is fiery for angels, though it is not for us. What we experience as fire is not spiritual but physical, and the difference between these two is like the difference between life and death. The spiritual sun, then, brings spiritual people to life with its warmth and maintains spiritual things, while the physical sun does the same for physical people and things. It does not do this with its own power, though, but by an inflow of spiritual warmth that provides it with effective resources.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 35
35. Because there is such a oneness of love and wisdom and of wisdom and love in the Divine-Human One, the divine essence is one. In fact, the divine essence is divine love because that love is a property of divine wisdom, and it is divine wisdom because that wisdom is a property of divine love. Because of this oneness, the divine life is a unity as well: life is the divine essence.
The reason divine love and wisdom are one is that the union is reciprocal, and a reciprocal union makes complete unity.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 47
47. Divine love and wisdom cannot fail to be and to be manifested in others that it has created. The hallmark of love is not loving ourselves but loving others and being united to them through love. The hallmark of love is also being loved by others because this is how we are united. Truly, the essence of all love is to be found in union, in the life of love that we call joy, delight, pleasure, sweetness, blessedness, contentment, and happiness.
The essence of love is that what is ours should belong to someone else. Feeling the joy of someone else as joy within ourselves--that is loving. Feeling our joy in others, though, and not theirs in ourselves is not loving. That is loving ourselves, while the former is loving our neighbor. These two kinds of love are exact opposites. True, they both unite us; and it does not seem as though loving what belongs to us, or loving ourselves in the other, is divisive. Yet it is so divisive that to the extent that we love others in this way we later harbor hatred for them. Step by step our union with them dissolves, and the love becomes hatred of corresponding intensity.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 43
43. This brings us to the point where we can see that divine love and wisdom in and of themselves are substance and form. They are essential reality and manifestation, and unless they were as much reality and manifestation as they are substance and form, they would be only theoretical constructs that in and of themselves are nothing.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 40
40. Divine love and wisdom is substance and is form. The everyday concept of love and wisdom is that they are something floating around in, or breathed out by, thin air or ether. Hardly anyone considers that in reality and in function they are substance and form.
Even people who do see that love and wisdom are substance and form sense them as something outside their subject, flowing from it; and they refer to what in their perceptions is outside the subject and flowing from it as substance and form even though they sense it as floating around. They do not realize that love and wisdom are the actual subject, and that what they sense as floating out from the subject is only the appearance of the inherent state of the subject.
Who (or What) is Swedenborg?
The ideas on this site are based on the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th-century Swedish scientist and theologian. Swedenborg claimed that his religious writings, the sole focus of the last three decades of his life, were done at the behest of the Lord himself, and constituted a revelation for a successor to the Christian Church.
In keeping with Swedenborg’s own statements, modern believers downplay his role as author, attributing the ideas to the Lord instead. For this reason they generally refer to Swedenborg’s theological works as “the Writings,” and some resist the label “Swedenborgian” as placing emphasis on the man rather than the message.
Since “the Writings” would be an unfamiliar term to new readers, we have elected to use the name “Swedenborg” as a label for those theological works, much as we might use “Isaiah” or “Matthew” to refer to books of the Bible. The intent, however, is not to attribute the ideas to Swedenborg, any more than we would attribute the divinity of the Bible to Isaiah the man or Matthew the man.
So when you read “according to Swedenborg” on this site, it’s really shorthand for “according to the theological works from the Lord through Swedenborg.” When you read “Swedenborg says,” it’s really shorthand for “the theological works of Swedenborg say.”