The Three Levels of Heaven and Their Angels | NCE Spotlight

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3475 

There are three heavens. In the first heaven, they see the superficial appearance of an object and perceive what it means on an inner plane. In the second heaven, they see the object as it is in its inner form and perceive what it is like on a still deeper plane. In the third heaven, they see that still deeper form, which is the inmost.

3475 cont’d

Each and every representation involves attributes of the Lord’s kingdom, which involve attributes of the Lord himself. Inhabitants of the first heaven see within their representations the kinds of things that exist in a deeper realm of the kingdom, within which they see those that exist in a still deeper realm. In this way they see those that represent the Lord, but distantly. Inhabitants of the second heaven see within their representations the kinds of things that exist in the deepest realm of the kingdom, within which they see those that represent the Lord more directly. But inhabitants of the third heaven see the Lord himself.

3346

In order for me to learn all this and know it for certain, the Lord in his divine mercy has allowed me to talk with spirits and angels almost continually for many years now. With spirits or angels of the first heaven I have been granted to use their own language, and sometimes with angels of the second heaven I have been granted to use theirs. The speech of angels in the third heaven, though, only presented itself to me as a burst of light in which perception radiated from a blaze of goodness at its core.