Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell

I once made a Swedenborg Foundation staff person upset when I said that Swedenborg's talks with spirits about heaven and hell were allegories disguising his political critique of the Church of England and the government. Swedenborg was so smart, he knew he had to hide his enlightened dissent and imperial scrutiny as conversations with celestial beings.

The foundation person left a long message on my answering service about how she was certain that Swedenborg was being literal and factual and not using spirits in heaven and hell as a metaphor for ecclesiastical or anarchist analysis.

You can easily gain insights by reading "the conjunction of heaven with the interior man" as "the compliance of the government as humble submissive servant of the will of The People."

"Heaven" means: 

government, or more specifically ideal government, or any human bonding full of genuine goodness and empty of evil.

"Hell" means:

corruption in church, state, and society, particularly the elites -- any human bonding that is based on evil and is empty of goodness.

"I have seen palaces in heaven of such magnificence as cannot be described" (185) means:

"I have understood political principles that are very profound and true beyond words."

And...

"Those who in heart had denied the Divine, whatever their professions may have been, had become so stupid as to have little comprehension of any civil truth, still less of any spiritual truth.

Their infernal fire is a lust for glory and reputation, which prompts them to assail one another, and from an infernal ardor, to torment those about them who do not worship them as deities; and this they do to one another in turns. 

Into such things is  all the learning of the world changed that has not received into itself light from heaven through the acknowledgment of the Divine." (354)

...means:

The egomaniac master race, those misleading leaders, amoral CEOs, value-free Presidummies, the God-hating elitists in every realm, the ruling class incompetents  who, especially when in danger of exposure as frauds and fools, will "torment others who do not worship them as deities."

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