Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 10736

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10736. After I had realized that I was as to my spirit out in space, far beyond our solar system - for this could be recognized from the changes of state and resulting movement onwards that was evident, lasting continuously for almost ten hours - I eventually heard spirits talking near to some planet, which I afterwards saw. When I came near them they said, after we had been talking together for a while, that on occasion they have visitors from somewhere else who talk to them about God and confuse the ideas in their minds. They also showed me the way by which those visitors come, from which I realized that they were some spirits belonging to our own planet. And when asked in what way those visitors had confused them they replied, By their saying that people should believe in a Deity distinguished into three persons, whom they nevertheless call one God. And when they investigate what is in the visitors' minds this presents itself not as three continuing from one into another but as three distinct and separate from one another; and in some minds they are seen as three persons talking among themselves, one to another. And although they call each person God and have a different idea of each they nevertheless say they are one God. The spirits conversing with me complained bitterly that the visitors confused them by their thinking three and saying one, when in fact what people think ought to match what they say, and what they say ought to match what they think. At that time they also investigated the kind of idea that the preacher accompanying me had regarding one God and three persons. The picture in his mind portrayed three gods, who however made one by their continuing from one into another; yet the idea in his mind presented this trinal unity as an entity which, being Divine, was invisible. And when this idea presented itself it was recognized that his thought was of the Father alone and not of the Lord, and that he pictured the invisible God as being no more than the forces of nature in their first beginnings. Consequently the inmost component of the natural order was his God. It should be remembered that in the next life the ideas contained in a person's mind regarding any matter at all present themselves in a visual, true to life way, and that the nature of everyone's belief is investigated by means of this presentation. It should be remembered also that the ideas in a person's mind regarding God are the chief ones of all; for through those ideas, if they are sincere, a joining to heaven is effected, since that which is Divine is what constitutes heaven.


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