Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell

It can in no sense be said that heaven is outside of any one; it is within him. For it is in accordance with the heaven that is within him that each angel receives the heaven that is outside of him. This makes clear how greatly misled is he who believes that to come into heaven is simply to be taken up among angels, without regard to what one's interior life may be—thus that heaven is granted to each one by mercy apart from means.

There are many spirits who have this idea. Because of this belief they have been taken up into heaven; but when they came there, because their interior life was contrary to the angelic life, their intellectual faculties became blinded… and they began to be tortured in their voluntary faculties… In a word, if those that have lived wickedly come into heaven, they gasp for breath and writhe about—like fishes out of water in the air.

From this it can be seen that heaven is not outside of a man, but within him.

Again, heaven is where the Lord is acknowledged, believed in, and loved. Variety in worship… from the variety of good in different societies is not harmful, but beneficial—for the perfection of heaven is therefrom.

From all this it can be seen as in a mirror how perfection comes from variety—even in heaven.

Finally it should be said that he who has heaven in himself has it not only in the largest or most general things pertaining to him but also in every least or particular thing, and that these least things repeat in an image the greatest.