240 HEAVEN and HELL §417
I have talked about this with angels, who have told me that they
have much the same idea about how small the number of the human
race is in comparison to the infi nity of the Creator. However, they do
not think in terms of space but of states, and to their minds, no matter
how many tens of thousands of planets you could conceive of, it would
still be simply nothing to the Lord.[ 7 ] Information on the planets in the universe, their inhabitants, and
the spirits and angels who come from them may be found in the booklet
mentioned earlier. What you will fi nd there has been revealed and shown
to me to let people know that the Lord’s heaven is vast and that it is all
from the human race, and also that our Lord is recognized everywhere as
the God of heaven and earth.418 We may also gather how vast the Lord’s heaven is from the fact that
heaven in a single complex resembles a single human being and also cor-
responds to everything within us. This relationship can never be com-
pletely fi lled in because there is a correspondence not only with the
particular members and organs and viscera of the body but also, in most
minute detail, with all the tiny organelles and viscera within them, even
with the individual vessels and fi bers—and not only with these, but with
the organic substances that receive the infl ow of heaven from within, the
infl ow that gives us the inner processes that support the workings of our
spirits. In fact, everything that happens within us happens in the forms
of our substance; anything that does not happen in substances as agents
is nothing. There is a correspondence of all these substances with heaven,
as you may gather from the chapter on the correspondence of everything
in heaven with everything in the human being (§§ 87 – 102 ). This corre-
spondence can never be completely fi lled in because the more assemblies
of angels there are that answer to each member, the more complete
heaven is. In the heavens, all forms of perfection increase as numbers
increase. This is because there is one goal for everything there and a
unanimous focus of everyone on that goal. That goal is the common
good; and when this rules, there is benefi t to individuals from the com-
mon good and from the good of individuals to the good of the whole.
This happens because the Lord turns everyone in heaven toward himself
(see above, § 123 ) and in this way makes them one with himself.
Anyone with a little rational enlightenment can fi gure out that the
unanimous harmony of many people, especially from such a source and
with such intimacy, brings forth perfection.