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be completely impossible.
For example, in True Christianity No.110 we read about a person who had
fallen out of heaven because of the way he viewed the Trinity (the shading here
indicates words in the main text that are not copied into the index – a perfectly
normal situation):
I asked him why he had fallen out of heaven like that. He answered that Michael’s
angels had thrown him down. “It was because I voiced some of the beliefs I had
convinced myself of in the world,” he said. “Among them was this one: God the Father
and God the Son are not one; they are two. As it turns out, though, all who are in the
heavens today believe that God the Father and God the Son are one like a soul and
a body.
But here is Swedenborg’s index entry for that passage. (The bold here
marks additional details that appear only in the index entry – which is not at
all normal for an index.)
I . . . asked why he had fallen out of heaven like that. He answered that Michael’s
angels had thrown him down, because he had said that God the Father and his Son
are two, not one. He said that the entire angelic heaven believes that God the Father
and his Son are one as a soul and a body are one – a point the angels support with
many passages from the Word. They also use rational argumentation as support:
they say the Son’s soul came from nowhere else but the Father; therefore that
soul was an image of the Father, and the body that came from it contained that
image. He added that when he was in heaven he of course spoke of one God, just
as he used to do on earth; but because his verbal statements to this effect did
not match what he was thinking, the angels said he did not believe in any God,
because the two views cancel each other out. He said this was why he was thrown
out of heaven.
No Switch
But in a way, doesn’t this make sense considering Swedenborg’s state? I mean,
it’s not as though there was an enlightenment switch that Swedenborg turned
on for writing his main text and then carefully turned off when he was cross-
referencing and indexing.
And why would he want to shut off his enlightenment while indexing?
What would be the point?
Put yourself in Swedenborg’s shoes for a moment – the Lord has appeared
to you and heaven is opened to you. But it is confusing, and your whole world
is being turned upside down. So much of what you have been taught is wrong
and you have to relearn and retool your mind.
Consider that the first appearance of an inner meaning to the Bible
surfaces in passages in Swedenborg’s Bible indexes.
And perhaps you have seen how seemingly random the entries in the
main text of Spiritual Experiences are. But then look at the index of Spiritual
Experiences – that material has been brought into much greater order. And
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