George F. Dole, Harvard Ph.D., has translated and arranged by theme a selection of passages from Swedenborg's works on life, heaven and hell, and the nature of God. This book is an accessible introduction for the reader new to Swedenborg, as well as a concise reference for those familiar with his philosophy. Swedenborg's] philosophy is about as practical as one could ask. Ascetism is not the way to God. ... A good person can be saved with any religion or with no religion.

"George F. Dole ... has done us a great service in bringing Emanuel Swedenborg back to the attention of our...

Is there really a hell? Should we be good simply to avoid punishment in the life hereafter? Just asking these questions theoretically doesn't get us far, George F. Dole suggests, but examining the works of someone who has been there may help. Dole refers to Emanuel Swedenborg, the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist and statesman who over the last twenty-seven years of his life had the privileged status of an observer of non-physical worlds, including hell. Swedenborg wrote that we are unconscious residents of the spiritual world as well as the material world, and the hells he encountered...

What happens to us when we die? Are heaven and hell real? If so, what are they like? Heaven and Hell contains the answers to these questions as seen by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

This new translation of Swedenborg s most popular work paints a detailed picture of life in the spiritual realms. A Swedish Enlightenment scientist of extraordinary accomplishment, Swedenborg underwent a spiritual crisis that led to an unparalleled series of paranormal experiences. He spent his last twenty-seven years in almost daily experience of heaven and hell, recording his observations and...

In his classic Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg takes the reader on a journey through the afterlife, describing the spiritual world in intricate detail. Our Life after Death is a collection of writings from that volume that focus specifically on what happens to us as we cross over and what we experience as new souls in the world of spirits, where we prepare to find our soul's permanent home.

Swedenborg tells us that it is not God who judges people and send them to either heaven or hell, but rather it is we who judge ourselves. In this book Swedenborg reveals the process by...

The first major theological work of the Swedish scientist-turned-seer Emanuel Swedenborg, "Secrets of Heaven" is in one sense a traveler s account. It reveals the unseen realms that await beyond death the light, warmth, and harmony of the angelic heavens and the varied darkness of the multitudinous hells. In this second volume, Swedenborg discusses place, distance, and time as it is experienced in the spiritual world. He also describes the ability of spirits to perceive goodness and truth and to know the character of other spirits on first approach. In addition, the work offers a detailed...

Emanuel Swedenborg understood the city of New Jerusalem--as described in the book of Revelation--to mean not a physical city but an epoch of history, a new spiritual age that was just beginning to take shape during his lifetime in the eighteenth century.

This short work, presented as a series of teachings that characterize this spiritual age to come, is also one of Swedenborg's most concise and readable summaries of his own theology. Building on fundamental concepts such as good, truth, will, and understanding, he describes the importance of love and usefulness in spiritual growth....