Heaven and Hell: The Portable New Century Edition

(Romina) #1

§136 light & warmth 75


k. There is a spiritual infl ow and not a physical one, so the infl ow is from the spiritual world into
the natural and not from the natural into the spiritual: 3219 , 5119 , 5259 , 5427 , 5428 , 5477 , 6322 ,
9110 , 9111 [ 10199 ].


heating up, burning, boiling, and kindling when we are talking about


either the affections of a good love or the cravings of an evil love.


The reason the love that emanates from the Lord as the sun is experi- 135


enced as warmth in heaven is that the deeper levels of angels are involved


in a love that comes from the divine good, which in turn comes from the


Lord. Consequently, their more outward levels, which are warmed by this,


are in warmth. This is why warmth and love are mutually responsive to


each other in heaven, so that everyone is in the kind of warmth that accords


with her or his love, as follows from what we have just been saying.


Our world’s warmth does not enter heaven at all, because it is too


crude, being natural and not spiritual. It is different for us, though, since


we are in the spiritual world as well as in the natural world. As far as our


spirits are concerned, we grow warm exactly according to our loves, but


as far as our bodies are concerned, we respond to both—the warmth of


our spirits and the warmth of the world. The former fl ows into the latter,


because they correspond.


We can determine the nature of the correspondence of these two


kinds of warmth by looking at animals, whose loves—the primary one


being for the procreation of offspring of their own species—break forth


and become active in response to the presence and touch of warmth


from our world’s sun, a warmth that comes primarily in spring and


summertime.


People who believe that the infl ow of our world’s warmth arouses


these loves are much mistaken. There is actually no infl ow of what is


natural into what is spiritual, but of what is spiritual into what is natural.


This latter infl ow is of the divine design, while the former would be con-


trary to the divine design.k


Like people on earth, angels have discernment and volition. Heaven’s 136


light produces their cognitive life because heaven’s light is divine truth


and the divine wisdom that comes from it; while heaven’s warmth pro-


duces their volitional life because heaven’s warmth is the divine good and


the divine love that comes from it. The quintessential life of angels is


from the warmth, but not from the light except to the extent that there is


warmth in it. We can see that life comes from the warmth because when


the warmth is taken away life dies. It is the same for faith without love or

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