THE HUMAN FORM:

One fascinating idea offered in Swedenborg is that all human societies and organizations -- from families up to nations and even heaven itself -- are human in form, reflecting all the functions and relationships that go on in our bodies. In fact, the human form is the organizing principal of life. 

 

The Lord, in his essence, is (according to Swedenborg) perfect,

infinite love given form through perfect, infinite wisdom. Because he is love, and love wants something to give itself to, he created human beings so that we could accept his love and return it, and thus be conjoined with him.

Two things had to be done for this to work. First, we had to be structured so we would fit into a state of union with the Lord – which means we had to be forms of love and wisdom ourselves. Second, we had to be free to reject the Lord’s love, or the choice would be meaningless (in fact, if we were purely good, with no choice, we would be extensions of the Lord; in that case loving us would in effect be the Lord loving himself, which is contrary to his nature).

The things that make us human, then, are the fact that we have thoughts and feelings (thoughts come from wisdom; feelings come from love), and that we can choose – in freedom – to use those thoughts and feelings to open ourselves up to the Lord’s love and be conjoined to him.

And how do we do that? By bringing our thoughts and feelings into line with the Lord’s love and wisdom, so his love and wisdom can flow into us. According to Swedenborg, we accomplish this first through our thoughts, which are more external and more under our control than our feelings are. We can fill our minds with the Lord’s teachings through the Bible, through ministers, teachers and parents and through the wisdom of people around us. Using those ideas of what is right and wrong, we can force ourselves to stop doing what is wrong and instead do what is right. If we stick to it out of a desire to be good people, the Lord will start rewarding us with joy in doing the right thing, and will eventually change how we feel so that we genuinely love to do what’s good.

If we do that, we will eventually become angels – who are also human, people who once lived in our world and followed the Lord. If we don’t, instead letting selfish loves rule us, we will eventually become evil spirits in hell – who are also human, though barely so, since they reject the Lord’s love.

An interesting aspect of this is the role of freedom. Free choice is essential to our humanity, but it seems like the more we force ourselve to follow rules the less freedom we have, until as angels we do nothing but obey. Following our urges and doing whatever we want seems like a much greater degree of freedom.

This, however, is exactly wrong on a spiritual level. If we follow our urges we will end up desiring only evil. Since evil wants only to hurt and dominate others, we will face constant obstacles and resistance to our desires. That will be all the more true in hell, where the Lord prevents evil spirits from doing any actual long-term harm. On the other hand, if we force ourselves to be hind and loving, the Lord will eventually fill us with the desire to be kind and loving– and in heaven, with everyone desiring to be kind and loving, there is no need for rules at all. Every angel does exactly what he or she wants to do.

There is one other aspect of humanity that is worth mentioning. Swedenborg says that because both heaven and the natural world were created by the Lord, they are in human form just as we are. That means every aspect of life has some analogy to the human body, and to the human spirit. Since humanity is modeled on the Lord, this also means that every aspect of heaven and earth has some analogy to the nature of the Lord.

Think about this next time you go for a hike – every leaf on every tree could tell us something about the Lord, if only we could understand it. And every leaf on every tree could tell us something about ourselves, as well.

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Passages from Swedenborg

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 11

God is the essential person. Throughout all the heavens, the only concept of God is a concept of a person. The reason is that heaven, overall and regionally, is in a kind of human form, and Divinity among the angels is what makes heaven. Further, thinking proceeds in keeping with heaven's form, so it is not possible for angels to think about God in any other way. This is why all the people on earth who are in touch with heaven think about God in the same way when they are thinking very deeply, or in their spirit.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 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 divine love and wisdom.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 231

We can tell that there are these three levels in us from the wayhuman minds are raised all the way into those levels of love and wisdom that angels of the second and third heaven enjoy. All those angels were born human; and in regard to the inner reaches of our minds, each of us is a miniature form of heaven. Count the number of heavens and you have the number of vertical levels within each of us, from our creation. Each of us is an image and likeness of God; so these three levels are written into us because they are in the Divine-Human One--that is, in the Lord.
We can tell that these levels in the Lord are infinite and uncreated while ours are finite and created on the basis of what I presented in part 1, for example from the principle that the Lord is intrinsic love and wisdom, that we are recipients of love and wisdom from the Lord, that only what is infinite can be attributed to the Lord, and that only what is finite can be attributed to us.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 240

There are two abilities within us, gifts from the Lord, that distinguish us from animals. One ability is that we can discern what is true and what is good. This ability is called "rationality," and is an ability of our discernment. The other ability is that we can do what is true and what is good. This ability is called "freedom," and is an ability of our volition. Because of our rationality, we can think what we want to think, either in favor of God or against God, in favor of our neighbor or against our neighbor. We can also intend and do what we are thinking, or when we see something evil and are afraid of the penalty, can use our freedom to refrain from doing it. It is because of these two abilities that we are human and are distinguished from animals.
These two abilities are gifts from the Lord within us. They come from him constantly and are never taken away, for if they were taken away, that would be the end of our humanity. The Lord lives in each of us, in the good and the evil alike, in these two abilities. They are the Lord's dwelling in the human race, which is why everyone, whether good or evil, lives forever. However, the Lord's dwelling within us is more intimate as we use these abilities to open the higher levels. By opening them, we come into consciousness of higher levels of love and wisdom and so come closer to the Lord. It makes sense, then, that as these levels are opened, we are in the Lord and the Lord is in us.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 287

We can also tell that love and wisdom are human by looking at heaven's angels, who are people in full beauty to the extent that they are caught up in love, and therefore in wisdom, from the Lord. The same conclusion follows from what it says in the Word about Adam's being created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26), because he was created in the form of love and wisdom.
All earthly individuals are born in the human form as to their physical bodies. This is because our spirit, which is also called our soul, is a person; and it is a person because it is receptive of love and wisdom from the Lord. To the extent that our spirit or soul actually accepts love and wisdom, we become human after the death of these material bodies that we are carrying around. To the extent that we do not accept love and wisdom we become grotesque creatures, retaining some trace of humanity because of our ability to accept them.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 320

We are a microcosm or little universe because the created universe has a human image if it is seen in terms of functions. However, this notion remains outside the scope of the thinking we do on the basis of the universe as we see it in this physical world and outside the scope of the knowledge that derives from that thinking. This means that the only way this thought can be established is by an angel who is in the spiritual world or by someone who has been granted entry into that world to see what is there. Since this has been granted to me, I can unveil this mystery from what I have seen there.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 330

Since the goal of creation is a heaven from the human race (and therefore the human race itself), the intermediate goals are everything else that has been created. Because these do relate to us, they focus on these three aspects of us: our bodies, our rational functioning, and, for the sake of our union with the Lord, our spiritual functioning. We cannot be united to the Lord unless we are spiritual; we cannot be spiritual unless we are rational; and we cannot be rational unless we are physically whole. These aspects are like a house, with the body as its foundation, the structure of the house as our rational functioning, and the contents of the house as our spiritual functioning. Living in the house is union with the Lord.
This enables us to see the sequence, level, and focus of the relationship to us of the useful functions that are intermediate goals of creation. That is, they are for the support of our bodies, for the development of our rational ability, and for our acceptance of what is spiritual from the Lord.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 368

5. The quality of the love determines the quality of the wisdom and therefore the quality of the person. This is because the quality of love and wisdom determines the quality of volition and discernment, volition being the vessel of love and discernment the vessel of wisdom, as already explained [358-361]; and these two constitute us as humans and give us our quality.
Love is highly complex, so complex that its various forms are without limit. This we can tell from the human race on earth and in the heavens. There is not a single individual or angel so like another that there is no difference. Love is what makes the difference, each individual being her or his own love. People think that wisdom is what differentiates, but wisdom comes from love. It is love's form, for love is the underlying reality of life and wisdom is the manifestation of life from this underlying reality.
The world believes that intelligence is what makes us human, but people believe this because our discernment can be raised up into heaven's light, as already explained [242-243, 255-256, 258], and it can seem as though we were wise. However, any discernment that goes too far, that is, discernment that is not wisdom of love, appears as though it were ours. This makes us seem like intelligent people, but that is only an appearance. The discernment that goes too far is actually a love for knowing and being wise and not at the same time a love for applying our knowledge and wisdom to life. So in this world it either ebbs away over time or waits around temporarily on the edges, outside the contents of memory. After death, then, it is separated from us, and nothing is left but what agrees with the real love of our spirit.
Since love does constitute our life and therefore ourselves, all the communities of heaven and all the angels of those communities are arranged according to the passions that come from their loves. No community and no angel within a community is located by any gift of discernment apart from his or her love. The same holds for the hells and their communities, but that depends on loves that are opposite to heavenly loves.
We can tell from this that the quality of the love determines the quality of the wisdom, and that these determine the quality of the person.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 388

We can also see from what has been said that the human mind is the essential person. The very first impulse toward the human form, or the essential human form, complete in all detail, comes from its primary forms, extended from the brain through its nerves, as already explained [366].
This is the form we attain after death, the form we call a spirit or an angel, a form that is an absolutely complete person, but a spiritual one. The material form that was added on the outside in the world is not the human form in its own right, but is derived from that form, added on the outside so that we can function usefully in the physical world. It also provides us with a stable vessel for our spiritual natures, a vessel drawn from the purer substances of this world, that we take with us [after death] in order to carry on and continue our lives.
It is an item of angelic wisdom that the human mind, both in a general way and in every least detail, is in a constant effort toward the human form because God is human.

True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 34

34
In people, the Infinite Divine is present the way something is present in an image of itself. The Word shows this, when we read the following:

 Finally God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, according to our likeness." Therefore God created humanbeings in his own image; in the image of God he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)

 From this statement it follows that human beings are organisms that are open to God, and organisms whose quality depends on their response.
[2] The human mind - the source and determiner of ourhumanness - has been formed into three areas to match three levels. On the first level the human mind is heavenly; angels of the highest heaven are on that level. On the second level it is spiritual; angels of the middle heaven are on that level. On the third level it is earthly; angels of the lowest heaven are on that level.
Organized as it is to accommodate these three levels, thehuman mind is a vessel for receiving divine inflow. Yet what is divine does not flow in beyond our smoothing of the way [Isaiah 40:4] or our opening of the door [Revelation 3:20]. If we smooth the way and open the door all the way to the highest level, the heavenly one, then we truly become an image of God. After death we will become an angel of the highest heaven. If we smooth the way or open the door only to the middle or spiritual level, then we still become an image of God, but one that is not as complete. After death we will become angels of the middle heaven. But if we smooth the way or open the door only to the lowest or earthly level, then we become an image of God at the lowest level, provided we acknowledge God and worship him with acts of devotion. After death we will become angels of the lowest heaven.
If we do not acknowledge God and do not worship him with acts of devotion, we divest ourselves of the image of God and become like one type of animal or another, except for the fact that we still enjoy the ability to understand and therefore to speak. If under those circumstances we close our highest earthly level, which corresponds to the highest heavenly level, we become like farm animals in what we love. If we close our middle earthly level, which corresponds to the middle spiritual level, we become like foxes in what we love, and like birds that come out in the evening, as far as our intellectual discernment goes. If we close even our lowest earthly level to its spiritual counterpart, we become like wild animals in what we love and like fish in our understanding of truth.

True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 65
6. Human beings were created as forms of the divine design. We have been created as forms of the divine design because we have been created as images and likenesses of God, and since God is the design itself, we have therefore been created as images and likenesses of that design.
The divine design originally took shape, and it continues to exist, from two sources: divine love and divine wisdom. Wehuman beings have been created as vessels for these two things. Therefore the design that divine love and wisdom follow in acting upon the universe, and especially upon the angelic heaven, has been built into us.
As a result, heaven in its entirety is a form of the divine design in its largest possible manifestation. In the sight of God, heaven is like one human being. The correspondence between heaven and a human being is in fact complete. There are no communities in heaven that do not answer to some part, some internal or external organ, of the human body. For this reason a given community in heaven is said to be in the province of the liver, the pancreas, the spleen, the stomach, the eye, the ear, or the tongue, and so on. In fact, the angels themselves know which specific area within a given part of the human body they inhabit. I was given an opportunity to learn about this from living experience. I saw a community of several thousand angels together in the form of one human being. From that experience it became clear to me that heaven as a whole is an image of God, and an image of God is a form of the divine design.

True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 775

What is true of the individual as a church is also true of the humancollective or aggregate known as the church. The church is a humancollective or aggregate that is made up of many individuals; thehuman individual is the church as it exists within each of the many people who constitute it.
The divine design always includes overall systems and individual components. Everything that exists has both of these elements. Without the overall systems, the individual components would not take shape or be able to sustain continued existence, just as the individual parts of the body could not exist without belonging to some broader system within it. In the human body, the individual parts are the organs and the parts within those organs; connective tissue not only envelops the body as a whole but also wraps and separates the individual organs, and even the parts within them. The same complex structure is found in every animal, bird, and insect. In fact it is also found in every tree, shrub, and seed.
Strings and wind instruments would give no sound at all if there were not some underlying ability to vibrate that they shared in common. That vibration is shaped into the sound of each instrument and the sound of each instrument is in turn shaped into a range of individual notes.
Our entire physical sensitivity is like this, too, in its relationship with our five individual senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. The relationship between our entire mental sensitivity and individual mental sensations is similar as well.

Divine Providence (Dole) n. 45

Since the goal of the Lord's divine providence is a heaven from the human race, it follows that the goal is the union of thehuman race with the Lord (see 28-31). It follows also that the goal is that we should be more closely united to him (32-33) and thereby be granted a more inward heaven. It also follows that the goal is for us to become wiser (34-36) and happier (37-41) because of this union, because we are given heaven through our wisdom and in proportion to it, and this is what gives us happiness. Lastly, it follows that the goal is for us to have a clearer sense of our identity and yet to be more clearly aware that we belong to the Lord (42-44).
All of these are part of the Lord's divine providence, because all of them are heaven, which is the goal.

Divine Providence (Dole) n. 58

The reason divine providence focuses on what is infinite and eternal particularly in its intent to save the human race is that the goal of divine providence is a heaven from the humanrace (see 37-45 [27-45] above). Since this is the goal, it follows that the main focus of divine providence is reforming and regenerating us, that is, saving us, since heaven is made up of people who have been reformed and regenerated.
Since regenerating us is a matter of uniting what is good and what is true, or love and wisdom, within us the way they are united in divinity that emanates from the Lord, divine providence focuses primarily on this in its intent to save thehuman race. The image of the Infinite and Eternal One can be found in us only in the marriage of what is good and what is true. We know that emanating divinity accomplishes this for the human race because of individuals described in the Word, individuals who have prophesied after being filled with that emanating divinity called the Holy Spirit, as well as because of enlightened people who see divine truths in the light of heaven. We see this particularly in angels, who have a sensory awareness of the presence, inflow, and union. Angels are also aware, though, that the true nature of this union could be called a direct contact.

Divine Providence (Dole) n. 75

It is different for us, since we have not only desires of earthly love but desires of spiritual love and desires of heavenly love as well. Our human mind has three levels, as I explained in part 3 of Divine Love and Wisdom. This means that we can rise from earthly knowledge to spiritual intelligence and from there to heavenly wisdom; and because of these latter two, the intelligence and the wisdom, we can turn to the Lord, be united to him, and therefore live forever. This raising of our desires would not be possible, though, if we did not have the ability to raise our discernment because we are rational and to do so intentionally because we are free.

Divine Providence (Dole) n. 98

I have stated [73] that everyone has the ability to intend called freedom and the ability to discern called rationality, but it needs to be clearly understood that these abilities are virtually instinctive in us. They are what make us human.
As I have already explained [97], it is one thing to act freely and rationally and another thing to act in true freedom and with true rationality. Only people who have allowed themselves to be regenerated by the Lord can act in true freedom and with true rationality. Others act freely and in keeping with a kind of thinking that they shape into an image of rationality. Still, everyone can attain to true rationality, and through that rationality to true freedom, except people who are born feebleminded or terribly dense.

Divine Providence (Dole) n. 156

To say that we are led and taught by the Lord alone is to say that the Lord is the only source of our life, since it is the intentions of our life that are led and the intelligence of our life that is taught. This is not the way it seems, though. It seems to us as though we live on our own, when the truth is that the Lord is the source of our life and we are not. As long as we are living in this world, we cannot be given a palpable sense that our life is coming from the Lord alone. We are not deprived of our sense of living on our own, because that is what makes us human. 

Divine Providence (Dole) n. 204

5. Heaven and hell are in this kind of form. I have noted in Heaven and Hell 59-102 (published in London in 1758) that heaven is in the human form and have mentioned the same in Divine Love and Wisdom and occasionally in the present work, so I refrain from presenting further support.
I have said that hell is also in a human form, but it is in a grotesquehuman form, the kind of form the devil has, the devil meaning hell taken as a whole. Hell has a human form because the people there were born human and have those two human capacities called freedom and rationality even though they have misused their freedom for intending and doing evil and their rationality for thinking and justifying it.

Divine Providence (Dole) n. 306

Given this picture of heaven and hell, the nature of thehuman mind is clear. As already stated [296, 299], our mind or spirit is either a miniature heaven or a miniature hell. Its contents are simply desires and the thoughts that they prompt, differentiated into genera and species the way heaven is differentiated into larger and smaller communities and united so that they act as a unity. The Lord oversees our desires and thoughts in the same way that he oversees heaven and hell.

Divine Providence (Dole) n. 322

Everyone Can Be Reformed, and There Is No Such Thing as Predestination

Sound reason tells us that everyone is predestined to heaven and no one to hell. We are all born human, which means that we have the image of God within us. The image of God within us is our ability to discern what is true and to do what is good. Our ability to discern what is true comes from divine wisdom and our ability to do what is good comes from divine love. This ability is the image of God; it is enduring with everyone who is whole and is never erased. It is why we can become civic, moral individuals; and if we can become civic and moral individuals, we can become spiritual individuals, since civic and moral life is receptive of spiritual life. We are called civic individuals if we know and abide by the laws of the country we are living in. We are called moral individuals if we make habits and virtues of these laws and live by them for rational reasons.