Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell

“It is a secret not yet known in this world that heaven, taken in a single all-inclusive grasp, reflects a single individual. In heaven, though, nothing is better known. Knowing this, knowing particulars and details about it, is the hallmark of angelic intelligence there. […] Since angels do know that all the heavens, like their communities, reflect a single individual, they refer to heaven as the universal and divine human, divine because the Lord's divine nature constitutes heaven.

People who do not have an appropriate concept of spiritual and heavenly realities cannot grasp the fact that heavenly and spiritual realities are arranged and connected in this form and image. They think that the earthly and material elements that make up their outmost form really make them what they are, and that without them they would not be human. Let them know, though, that they are not human beings because of these elements but because they are able to understand what is true and will what is good. These are the spiritual and heavenly realities that make them human.”

All things correspond in the universe, including this life and what comes after; you are revealing your eternal destination now in what you choose, think, and love.

Before he ever wrote of what he saw in heaven and hell, Emanuel Swedenborg had already anticipated the origin of the solar system decades ahead of Kant and Laplace, and described functions of the brain that science wouldn't confirm for a hundred years. A polymath, philosopher, and theologian, Swedenborg was, by any measure, a scientific genius – and he brings that same systematic, coherent approach to recording his spiritual visions and experiences, giving his poetic and prophetic voice a distinctively rigorous quality. Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell is a natural starting point into Swedenborg's rich body of work, offering detailed insight into the afterlife, the nature of God, and the purpose of life. His mystical Christian worldview challenged the church dogma of his day, and his impact bridging science and religion echoes through the centuries, informing significant cultural figures, such as Carl Jung, William Blake, and Helen Keller. His foundational concept 'the law of correspondences' describes a universe where visible and invisible realities mirror one another, where nothing exists materially without a correspondence in the spiritual world. In Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell, Swedenborg reveals that angels are simply humans fully aligned with divine love, and that upon death, God sends no one away from heaven; in fact, heaven and hell are not future destinations but rather reflections of our present earthly life and our “ruling loves.” Eternity does not wait for death – it has already begun, in the shape of what you love now.

Beneath our passing moods and surface contradictions, Swedenborg explains there is a central orientation of the soul, a “ruling love” that quietly orders our choices, loyalties, thoughts, and habits. This should cause us to pause and ask ourselves: what consistently governs my choices when image, fear, and convenience fall away? What do I protect at all costs? What do I return to for comfort? What do I instinctively serve? Whatever this ruling love is, death shall not replace it but clarify and absolutize it – the masks that helped us live ambiguously on earth fall away, and we drift toward the communities, pleasures, and atmospheres that truly match what we are. “After death, our ruling affection or love awaits each one of us.”

This is the case because all things correspond – visible and invisible, outward and inward, future heaven and present earth. “In a word, absolutely everything in nature, from the smallest to the greatest, is a correspondence.” Reality is therefore not a collection of isolated fragments but an overlapping whole, alive with interwoven meanings. Each individual is said to be a heaven (with our body parts corresponding to different levels of the afterlife), each angel is said to be a former human, and each human parallels the divine through being made in its image. This correspondence of things also means that heaven and hell are not only future destinations but already present as our inward tendencies – subtle climates of soul that show themselves in what we desire, justify, and repeatedly choose here and now. “Just as everything that is in accord with the divine design corresponds to heaven, everything that is contrary to the divine design corresponds to hell. Everything that corresponds to heaven reflects what is good and true, while what corresponds to hell reflects what is evil and false.”

In other words, the stakes are high: what you live now is what you shall continue to live into eternity. This is why Swedenborg refuses the crude picture of a wrathful God assigning punishments from above. God, he explains, is pure love and continually wills heaven for all. But heaven cannot be enjoyed by those who have schooled themselves in hatred, deceit, domination, or self-absorption. Those who have hell on the inside shall soon have it outside, as well. “Hell is never the same for any two people, nor is heaven.”

Swedenborg’s work asks you to reflect honestly on your life: pause, in an ordinary moment, to notice what you actually love once fear, image, and convenience fall away – and let that decide what you do next. In the end, the message becomes simple: heaven is not arrived at through belief, but created and revealed, moment by moment, in what we choose to serve.

For readers who want to explore more wisdom from the prolific mystic-scientist, the Swedenborg Foundation offers a starter program, complete with free eBooks of his most popular works. The Swedenborg Society in London holds his personal archive at Swedenborg House and runs talks and events for those who wish to study in person.