Conversations With Angels: What Swedenborg Heard in Heaven

Rating:
Summary: VALUABLE AS OUTPUT OF A HIGH GENIUS
Review: By all accounts Swedenborg was both a high genius and, in his later years, psychic...focused on developing a world view that encompassed heaven and hell, angels etc. As such this book is a collection of many of his remarks about the afterlife and heaven and hell. It has a dated feel in the sense that Swedenborgs views are firmly those of someone writing over 200 years ago...and it is a puzzle how to reconcile them with more "modern" writers/travellers on the path. The charitable view would be that, if what Swedenborg says is somehow true, then it is also filtered through the mindset of someone of his era (just as must be true of someone of our own era). This "dated" aspect of his ideas greatly reduced their value for me...but some of his ideas (eg about how we create our own heavens and hells) cannot be found elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Conversations with Angels: What Swedenborg Heard in Heaven
Review: This is the first Swedenborg book I read and it introduced me to the whole fascinating world of his visions. I have read numerous books on angelic encounters, life after death, near death experiences, etc., but this book is truly unique. In this book, Swedenborg speaks about his experiences as he passes into the realms of heaven and encounters angels. He relates answers to questions he poses to the angels, things like:"Please teach me what happiness is." The angels respond, "Love in action gives a feeling of happiness. In heaven it acts with widsom, in hell with folly. Either way it makes its subect happy."

Unlike some books about channeling and similar processes, I had no trouble believing and understanding that the messages in this book were genuine. I felt comfortable with the fact that Swedenborg really spoke with higher realms and wasn't just creating this in his own mind.

If you're looking for an inspiring book to help you understand life on many levels, and are tired of the myriad NDE and angelic encounter books that abound, you'll enjoy this one!