Divine Providence 306
306. From the idea of heaven and hell just presented, the nature of the human mind can be seen, for as we said, a person’s mind or spirit is in miniature form either a heaven or a hell. One can see namely that a person’s interior constituents are simply affections and the accompanying thoughts, differentiated into classes and types as though into larger and smaller associations and so conjoined as to act in concert. Moreover, one can see that the Lord governs those affections and thoughts in the same way that He governs heaven or hell.
(The fact that a person is in miniature form either a heaven or a hell may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, published in 1758 in London, nos. 51-102.)
I am having trouble seeing how in heaven person does not exist. It that case where does love of the neighbor go when performing uses there?
Hi Margit these numbers from the AC speak to the non-personal aspect of angelic consciousness – 5225, 5287, 7002, 8343, 8985, and there are many others. The neighbour naturally held is embedded in the idea of person, person being it’s natural representation. Spiritually understood though the neighbour is good, and in the highest sense is the Lord Himself. So at our level of life person (the personal) is central, but in the heavens the concept of person (what’s personal – of the personality) is relegated to the outermost periphery in angelic thought so as to be hardly even present. So… Read more »
Hi Margit. I’ve thought about this too. The Lord gives us a heavenly proprium and a sense of self so that we are able to enjoy spiritual delights and the delights of being in use. I imagine in heaven that most of the states we move through are specific to use. When we are actively engaged in use and in the joy of it – we lose our sense of self, time falls away and we don’t notice the space we are in- we are just in the Lord’s delight of that use – of the conjunction of that good… Read more »
Margit Irwin: I can see in heaven that one use is to continue to improve our understanding and perception of truth/good – but outside of honing our own relation with the Lord how do we define the uses we perform? David Millar: So removing the idea of person from one’s thought when engaging with others is to think in terms of what is of the Lord in a person, to think in terms of the good and the true. The focus is on how this can be supported, whereas attention to another’s person is to focus on what is external… Read more »