In Swedenborg's works, “enlightenment” means an ordering and linking of truths in our minds by the Lord, so that we understand them more clearly and deeply than before. Perhaps because of his intense awareness of spiritual world influences on us, Swedenborg does not advocate us seeking our own enlightenment on what is true, but instead to acquire it through hearing and obeying what the Lord reveals to us through the Word.

When people read the Word as a holy book in order to know what’s true, and think about what they are reading, they are inviting the Lord to flow into their minds, and carry out this ordering and linking process.

When someone then tries to put those truths into the acts of his or her life, the order and enlightenment are much increased. Note that the Lord doesn’t reveal new truths this way, but simply casts new light on the truths that the person has freely acquired.

Such enlightenment can go on through this life on earth and on to eternity in heaven. Some translators of Swedenborg's Latin have used the word “illustration” instead of “enlightenment.”

(Referenties: Arcana Coelestia 8211, 9424, 10551, Arcana Coelestia 10551 [2]; The Word 13; The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture 57; The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding Faith 5)

61. I have been granted to see many people after death who believed they would shine like stars in the sky, because, as they said, they had held the Word holy, read it often, took much from it, used it to affirm the dogmas of their faith, and because of that were celebrated in the world as learned. They believed that on that account they would be Michaels and Raphaels.

[2] But many of them were examined to discover what love prompted them to study the Word, and some were found to have done so out of a love of self, in order to appear great in the world and be worshiped as leaders of the church, and some out of a love of the world, in order to gain riches. When they were examined to discover what they knew from the Word, they were found to know nothing of any genuine truth from it, but only the kind of truth that we call truth falsified, which in itself is false. Moreover, they were told that this was the case with them because they had themselves and the world as their goals — in other words, what they loved — and not the Lord or heaven. And when self and the world are the goals, then when people read the Word, their minds remain fixed on themselves and the world, and as a consequence they think continually in terms of their own self-interest, which is in darkness as regards anything having to do with heaven. A person in this state cannot be withdrawn by the Lord from his self-interest and so be raised into the light of heaven, and so neither can he receive any influx from the Lord through heaven.

[3] I have also seen people like this admitted into heaven; but when they were found there to be without truths, they were cast down. Yet even so the conceit remained in them that they were deserving of heaven.

A different experience befell people who had studied the Word out of an affection to know the truth because it was true, and because it fostered useful life endeavors, not only their own, but also the neighbor’s. I have seen them raised into heaven and so into the light that surrounds Divine truth there, and they were raised at the same time into angelic wisdom, and into its felicity, which is eternal life.