126. Anyone can establish for himself the existence of many worlds from the large number of stars to be seen in space. It is well known in the learned world that each star is in its own region like a sun, keeping its fixed position as the sun of our world does its; it is its distance which makes it appear as small as a star. It follows that like our sun it has planets round it, which are worlds. These are invisible to our eyes because of their immense distance, and because they shine only with light reflected from their own star, which again cannot reach us here. What other purpose can such a vast sky with so many constellations serve? Man is the purpose for which the universe was created, so that he should people heaven with angels. And in the eyes of an infinite Creator, how insignificant would the human race be, and the heaven composed of angels from one world, seeing that a thousand, or even tens of thousands of worlds would not be enough for Him.
[2] It has been calculated that if there were a million worlds in the universe, and three hundred million human beings in each world, and two hundred generations in six thousand years, and if each human being or spirit were given a space of three cubic metres,* the total number of people or spirits, if all added together, would still not occupy a thousandth part of the volume of this world, but perhaps the volume of one of the satellites of the planets Jupiter or Saturn. Such a volume would be beneath notice on the scale of the universe, since these satellites are barely visible to the naked eye. How insignificant would this be to the Creator of the universe, who, being infinite, would not be satisfied even if they filled the whole universe?
[3] I talked with angels on this subject, and they said that they shared a similar idea about the small size of the human race compared with the infinite size of the Creator; but their thinking was in terms of states, not space. In their opinion as many myriads of worlds as could ever be imagined would still be as nothing to the Lord. However, I shall in what follows report on the worlds in the starry sky from direct experience. This will show how my spirit was able to travel to such places, while my body remained in its own place. [* An approximation; the original uses a word meaning ell. -TR.]
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