Emanuel Swedenborg wrote this book, Heaven and Hell, in 1758 based on 13 years of experience of communing with “angels” as he referred to them.
Swedenborg’s works have influenced many spiritual authors in the intervening hundreds of years, and has even inspired institutes who study his various books and messages.
His writings were heavily footnoted and referenced various sources, including many biblical references. You will find many discussions of his works, but a plain audiobook was a little more difficult to find.
This then is an audiobook that has been created to try and make the subject matter more approachable.
The works have been partially abridged, to remove references that detracted from the flow of the text and to reduce some of the clumsiness that resulted. We also chose where to sub-divide the book into “parts” for the benefit of the format. We, as such, recognise that some choices may be seen as arbitrary; we have, however, tried to remain as faithful to the text as possible.
There are many places to find this book in it’s whole form online. One such place is: https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/emanuel-swedenborg-books.html which contains further writings of Emanuel Swedenborg beside this one.
Global Grey books offers a wealth of free content and we have relied on their version for this audiobook. Please do support the authors who maintain these types of repositories. We have no affiliation or relationship with their site.
Contents of this Audiobook
Part 1:
– Introduction
– The God of heaven is Lord
– It is the divine of the Lord that makes Heaven
– In Heaven the divine of the Lord is love to him and charity towards the neighbour
Part 2:
– Heaven is divided into two kingdoms
– There are three Heavens
Part 3:
– The Heavens consist of innumerable societies
– Each society is a Heaven in a smaller form, and each angel in the smallest form
– All Heaven in the aggregate reflects a single man
Part 4:
– Each society in Heaven reflects a single man
– Therefore every Angel is in a complete human form
– It is from the Lord’s divine human that Heaven as a whole and in parts reflects man
– Extracts from the Arcana Coelstia relating to the Lord and his divine human
Part 5:
– There is a correspondence of all things of Heaven with all things of man
– There is a correspondence of Heaven with all things of the Earth
Part 6:
– The sun in Heaven
– Light and heat in Heaven
Part 7:
– The four quarters in Heaven
– Changes of state of the Angels in Heaven
Part 8:
– Time in Heaven
– Representatives and appearances in Heaven
– The garments with which Angels appear clothed
– The places of abode and dwellings of Angels
Part 9:
– Space in Heaven
– The form of Heaven which determines affiliations and communications there
Part 10:
– Governments in Heaven
– Divine workshop in Heaven
– The power of the Angels in Heaven
Part 11:
– The speech of Angels
– The speech of Angels with man
Part 12:
– Writings in Heaven
– The wisdom of the Angels of Heaven
Part 13:
– The state of innocence of Angels in Heaven
– The state of peace in Heaven
Part 14:
– The conjunction of Heaven with the Human race
– Conjunction of Heaven with man by means of the Word
Part 15:
– Heaven and Hell are from the human race
– The Heathen. Or peoples outside of the church, in Heaven
Part 16:
– Little children in Heaven
Part 17:
– The wise and the simple in Heaven
– The rich and the poor in Heaven
Part 18:
– Marriages in Heaven
Part 19:
– The employments of Angels in Heaven
– Heavenly joy and happiness
Part 20:
– The immensity of Heaven
– What the world of spirits is
Part 21:
– In respect to his interiors every man is a spirit
– The resuscitation of man from the dead and his entrance into eternal life
– Man after death is in a complete human form
Part 22:
– After death man is possessed of every sense, and of all the memory, thought, and affection, that he had in the World, leaving nothing behind except his Earthly body
Part 23:
– Man after death is such as his life had been in the World
Part 24:
– The delights of every one’s life are changed after death into things that correspond
– The first state of man after death
– The second state of man after death
Part 25:
– Third state of man after death, which is a state of instruction for those who enter Heaven
– No one enters Heaven by mercy apart from means
Part 26:
– It is not so difficult to live the life that leads to Heaven as is believed
– The Lord rules the Hells
Part 27:
– The Lord casts no one into Hell; The spirit casts himself down
– All who are in the Hells are in evils and falsities therefrom derived from the loves of self and of the World
Part 28:
– What Hell fire is and what gnashing of teeth is
– The malice and heinous artifices of infernal spirits
– The appearance, situation, and number of the Hells
Part 29:
– The equilibrium between Heaven and Hell
– By means of the equilibrium between Heaven and Hell man is in freedom
source