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Life on Other Planets
In EU 1 (AC 6695), Emanuel Swedenborg writes:
By the Lord's Divine mercy I have had my interior faculties,
which belong to my spirit, opened, so that I have been enabled to talk with
spirits and angels, not only those in the vicinity of our earth, but also
with those near other worlds. Since therefore I was desirous of knowing
whether there were other inhabited worlds, and what they and their
inhabitants were like, I was allowed by the Lord to talk and mix with
spirits and angels from other worlds. With some this lasted a day, with
others a week, with yet others for months. I was informed by them about the
worlds they came from and in the vicinity of which they were, about the
life, behaviour and religious practices of their inhabitants, and other
matters worth relating about them. Since I was allowed to gain my knowledge
in this fashion, I can describe them from what I have heard and seen.
But modern astronomical
discoveries, while in principle encouraging idea of life elsewhere in the
universe, do not support the idea of inhabitants of the moon, mercury, and the
other planets in our own solar system.
So we ask: what is
going on? Was Swedenborg correct in apparently describing also the physical
inhabitants, or not? Was he mislead by his desire "of
knowing whether there were other inhabited worlds"? Here is a list of articles that deal with
his reports about life on other planets:
(This list used to be at
www.newchurchissues.org/lop/lopndx.htm)
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