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THE COSMIC MAN are again described as a human organism, we read: “The heavens are divided into two kingdoms, one called celestial, the other spiritual; in the celestial kingdom love to the Lord reigns, in the spiritual kingdom wisdom from that love. The kingdom where love reigns is called heaven's cardiac kingdom, the one where wisdom reigns is called its pulmonic kingdom. Be it known, that the whole angelic heaven in its aggregate represents a man, and before the Lord appears as a man; consequently its heart makes one kingdon and its lungs another. For there is a general cardiac and pulmonic movement throughout heaven, and a particular movement therefron in each angel. The general cardiac and pulmonic movement is from the Lord alone, because love and wisdom are from Hini alone";** i.c., heaven has the form of a giant man, and this form is enlivened through the cardiac movement which is divine love, incessantly procecding from God, as well as by the pulmonic, or respiratory, which is divine reason. God is not identical with the giant anthropomorphic organism formed of all the stratifications of heaven, yet pervades it with his love and wisdom, and thesc, in turn, pervade the organism, as the blood from the heart and the air from the lungs pervade the human frame.
The most significant difference between this Western and the Indian Cosmic Man is that whereas in Swedenborg's vision only heaven is shaped according to the divine human image (which is a likeness of the archetypal form of God himself), in Jainism the whole universe, including even its infrahuman stratifications, is comprised in the divine anthropomorphic organism-beasts and plants, which are devoid of man's higher faculties of love, wisdom, and spirituality, and also inorganic matter and the mute elements. This accords with the universal scope of India's doctrines of perfection, transformation, and redemption: not only human beings, but all existences are included. Though steeped in darkness, the beasts and even the atoms are looking for salva
68 Published by the American Swedenborg and Publishing Society, New York, 1912, S381.
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |