4528. The eye, or rather the sight of the eye, corresponds in particular to those communities in the next life which are surrounded by paradise gardens, which appear up above, in front and slightly to the right. There one can see gardens containing trees and flowers belonging to genera and species so numerous that in comparison with them those found on this entire planet are few. Each object there holds a measure of intelligence and wisdom shining out of it, enabling you to say that the people in those gardens are at the same time in the paradise gardens of intelligence and wisdom. Those gardens stir the inner feelings of the people there, and so gladden not only the eye but also at the same time the understanding.
[2] The paradise gardens are in the first heaven, on the verge leading to the inner parts of that heaven. They are representations which come down from the heaven above it when the angels of that higher heaven are engaged in serious discussion about the truths of faith. To communicate with one another the angels there rely on spiritual and celestial ideas to serve them as verbal expressions, and on consecutive sequences of representations, the beauty and loveliness of which cannot be described in any way at all. It is these beautiful and lovely expressions of ideas that are represented in the lower heaven as paradise gardens.
[3] This heaven is divided into many separate heavens, to which the individual parts within the chambers of the eye correspond. There is a heaven where the paradise gardens referred to above may be found. There is a heaven where different coloured skies may be seen, where the whole air is flashing so to speak with gold, silver, pearls, precious stones, very tiny flowers, and countless other things. There is a rainbow heaven where very beautiful rainbows appear, large and small, variegated with most splendid colours. Each of these is a product of the light from the Lord which holds intelligence and wisdom within it, and therefore every single object there holds some measure of intelligence and wisdom - the attributes of truth and good respectively - which is manifested in this representative fashion.
[4] Those who do not have any concept of heaven or of the light there can scarcely be led to believe that such things exist there. Consequently if those who bring that absence of belief with them into the next life have been governed by the truth and good of faith, they are taken by angels to those sights, and when they see them they are astounded. Concerning the paradise gardens, the skies, and the rainbow scenes, see previous descriptions of my experience of them in 1619-1626, 2296, 3220; also in the heavens consecutive representations occur constantly, 1807, 1808, 1971, 1980, 1981, 2299, 2763, 3213, 3216-3218, 3222, 3350, 3475, 3485.
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