What is it to be the greatest unless to be the most happy? For to be
the most happy is what the powerful seek through power and the rich
through riches. It was further said that heaven does not consist in a
desire to be least for the purpose of being greatest, for that would
be aspiring and longing to be the greatest; but it consists in
desiring from the heart the good of others more than one's own, and
in serving others with a view to their happiness, not with recompense
as an end, but from love.
409. Heavenly joy itself, such as it is in its essence, cannot be
described, because it is in the inmost of the life of angels and
therefrom in everything of their thought and affection, and from this
in every particular of their speech and action. It is as if the
interiors were fully opened and unloosed to receive delight and
blessedness, which are distributed to every least fiber and thus
through the whole. Thus the perception and sensation of this joy is
so great as to be beyond description, for that which starts from the
inmosts flows into every particular derived from the inmosts,
propagating itself away with increase towards the exteriors.
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