Imagery, Harmony, and the Source of Beauty | NCE Spotlight

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:


3310:4


Only through concepts formed from facts and sense impressions can
we corroborate doctrinal truth. Absolutely everything we think
about—even the deepest mystery of faith—comes with some earthly,
sense-based image, even though we usually have no idea of the
true character of that image. In the other life, if we wish, it
can be displayed for our minds or even (if we so desire) for our
eyes to see. In the other world, such things can be presented to
view. This seems unbelievable but is still true.


3425:3 


Those who are not defiant act, talk, seek wealth, and indulge in
pleasure in the same ways as those who are—so much so that in
external appearance they can hardly be told apart. Only their
aims differentiate them; to put it another way, only what they
love differentiates them (since what we love is our aim). Yet
although they look the same in their outward form, or body, they
have nothing in common in their inner form, or spirit. People who
are in correspondence—whose outer self harmonizes with their
inner self—have a spirit that is radiant and beautiful, as
heavenly love is when embodied. People who are in
opposition—whose outer self resists their inner self—may look the
same on the outside, but their spirit is dark and ugly, as
self-love and materialism are, or as contempt and hatred are,
when embodied.


3080


The reason very good to look at symbolizes beauty—here, the
beauty of a desire for truth . . . —is that all beauty comes from
goodness that has innocence within it. When the goodness of the
inner self acts on the outer self, it actually creates beauty.
That is the source of all human beauty.