Heaven and Hell

The Portable New Century Edition

By: Emanuel Swedenborg

Narrated by: Gordon Meyer

Length: 17 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

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 27 years in almost daily experience of heaven and hell, recording his observations and conversations, many of which are reported in Heaven and Hell. This sustained and detailed description of the nonphysical realms has left its impression on the minds of many great thinkers, including Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, Emerson, Borges, and Milosz.

The New Century Edition of the works of Emanuel Swedenborg is a modern-language, scholarly translation of Swedenborg's theological works. The series' easy style retains the dignity, variety, clarity, and gender-inclusive language of Swedenborg's original Latin, bringing his thought to life.

This portable edition contains the text of the translation, but not the introduction, annotations, or other supplemental materials found the deluxe edition.

©2002, 2008, 2010, 2012 Swedenborg Foundation, Inc. (P)2014 Swedenborg Foundation, Inc.

Unintelligible - WARNING! Get the print version!

I downloaded the .pdf because I wanted to read this book and the .pdf is free online. I piped it into a text to speech app so I could listen to it, but found that didn't work because this book is full of cross-reference notes which are just long lists of numbers. So, I figured I'd buy it on audible because there is no way the narrator would actually read off those numbers. Guess what? He does. 17 hours of reading and I'll bet 25% of that time is just the narrator reading long lists of numbers. Trying to understand what the author is explaining is nearly impossible. Not only is the language difficult to understand because it is all translated from latin and these are the concepts of a man who is far more intelligent than you, but you have to endure long lists of numbers after nearly every sentence. Why would I want the numerical cross reference notes if I'm going to listen to the book. If I wanted to cross reference I would sit down with a print book and the cross reference material. This is INSANE and completely worthless. The only way to read this book is in print, so that you can skip over the numbers.

A spiritual book unlike any other

Usually when friends I talk with friends about spiritual and/or motivational literature, I let them know how spiritual the book in question is. This allows people to place themselves on the scale ranging from more motivational material, to channeled books, books who use the word "God" a lot etc.

This one is beyond anything I've ever read. Apparently Swedenborg's contemporaries, such as Emmanuel Kant, couldn't really decide if he was for real. It seems Emmanuel at first was impressed with Swedenborg, later to have second thoughts, probably when he began talking about his conversations with angels.

This is what the book is about. It's about angels, how they live, what they do, how they get to where they are. Extremely detailed explanations are given of the "physical" layout of Heaven and Hell, different stages of both in so much detail it's at times a little dry.

Just amazing that this kind of book exists. It's the farther reaches of spiritual literature that I have encountered and really enjoyable, albeit presented in an almost academic style.

Numerical reference citing makes this unlistenable

Swedenborg's text is fascinating. However, the speaker's *CONTINUOUS* numerical paragraph/ reference citing throughout the text makes the audio impossible to listen to. This isn't just a minor numerical reference at the end or beginning of a paragraph. There are sections read where numerical citing takes up a large percentage of a minute. This type of citing in text is easy to skip over when actually reading but useless in an audio format. I have a difficult time imagining that this could be helpful to anyone within an audio format. Even someone highly motivated to research the noted references couldn't be benefited by hearing a string of 20-30 numerical listings in a row.

Lastly, the audio quality is garbage and the speaker's voice droning.

I apologize for my complete negativity reviewing this but I am just blown away by the complete lack of forethought in the production of this audiobook.

Please don't let this discourage anyone from diving further into the works of Swedenborg. It's worth so in other formats.

Endless number references very, very annoying!

I know this is an interesting read, but after only two hours of listening, with a long, long string of page or sectiion number references, I had to cut this off. Sadly, this annoying aspect ruins the entire experience. For this reason, I would not purchase or listen to other books of this Swedenbourg series.

This audio book is full of numbers!!!!

Is it necessary to read all the page numbers for the audience? Are we coming here to be hypnotised? Seriously?

All of the section references should be omitted

Painful to hear about an hour of section references. It was tough enough to grasp, but that just made it near impossible to follow...

Could do without the number listings

Could do without the number listings. They are distracting, annoying and unnecessary. Reader and information is fine though.

I love Swedenborg but I wish they left out the references

I found out about E Swdenborg by coming across the YouTube channel "Off the left eye" which is out on by the Swedenborg foundation.I

I appreciate all the demanding work E Swedenbord to tell us about his experiences ncluding these references. But I would had preferred that in this audio book they would of mentioned they were available in the text and left them out of the audio.

However I do want to thank the people responsible for making this audio. I think learning about E Swdenborg's experiences mostly through off the left eye has helped me grow spiritually. And I appreciate any effort to let people know more about him.

Terrible Audio. Questionable content

The audio is so bad it makes this ebook unlistenable. Also too pro christian 4me

Incredibly Balanced Theology

Heaven and Hell is the single most helpful and inspiring theological work I have ever read aside from the bible itself. Every territory Swedenborg ventures into is backed by sufficient scriptural reference and a deep look into how God himself interacts with us. The experiences Swedenborg talks about are all consistent and explained in a way easy enough for the common man to understand and relate to. His use of logic, reason, and correspondence with the natural world all seal the deal of a true and lovely view over the spiritual environment of the universe. I highly recommend this to anyone who is knocking at the door of truth and looking for the inner-workings of the spiritual world.

Distracting ‘Section’ Notes

I would have preferred to have listened to just the text instead of the topic being broken by references to Section Numbers here and Section number there.