Soul-Body Interaction, Believed to Occur either by a Physical Inflow, or by a Spiritual Inflow, or by a Preestablished Harmony.

§§1–2 / [Author’s Introduction]

1. §3 / There are two worlds: a spiritual world where spirits and angels live, and an earthly world where we live.

2. §4 / The spiritual world came into being and is kept in existence from its sun, and the earthly world, from its sun.

3. §5 / The sun of the spiritual world is pure love from Jehovah God,

who is at its center.

4. §6 / Warmth and light emanates from that sun; the essence of that emanating warmth is love, and the essence of the emanating light is wisdom.

5. §7 / Both spiritual warmth and spiritual light flow into us. The warmth flows into our will and gives rise there to a love for doing what is good, and the light flows into our understanding and gives rise there to the truth that leads to wisdom.

6. §8 / These two—spiritual warmth and spiritual light, or love and wisdom—flow together from God into the human soul, flow through our soul into our mind and its feelings and thoughts, and flow from there into our physical senses, speech, and actions.

7. §9 / The sun of our earthly world is nothing but fire, and is the means by which this earthly world came into being and is kept in existence.

8. §10 / This means that everything that emanates from the physical sun is in and of itself dead.

9. §11 / What is spiritual wears what is physical the way we wear clothes.

10. §12 / It is spiritual elements clothed in this way that enable us to live as rational and moral beings—that is, to live spiritually on this earthly level.

11. §13 / How receptive we are to this inflow depends on the state of love and wisdom within us.

12. §14 / Our understanding can be lifted into the light (that is, the wisdom) that angels enjoy to the extent that our rational ability has been cultivated; and our will can be elevated into the warmth, or love, of heaven, depending on how we live our lives. However, the love in our will becomes elevated only to the extent that we will and do what the wisdom in our understanding teaches us.

13. §15 / It is totally different for animals.

14. §16 / Unknown until now, there are three levels in the spiritual world and three in this earthly world, and these shape the way all inflow happens.

15. §17 / Purposes are on the first level, means on the second, and results on the third.

16. §18 / This shows us the nature of spiritual inflow, from its origin to its results.

§§19–20 / [Concluding Accounts]

13. 11 How receptive we are to this inflow depends on the state of love and wisdom within us.

I have already explained that we are not life but organs receptive of life, that love united to wisdom is life, and that God is love itself and wisdom itself and therefore life itself [§§5, 8, 10, 11]. It then follows that we are images of God or receptors of life from God to the extent that we love wisdom, or hold wisdom in the embrace of love within ourselves. Conversely, to the extent that we engage in the opposite love and therefore in madness, we receive our life not from God but from hell, a life that is called death.

[2] By themselves love and wisdom do not constitute life, although they are the realities that lie behind it; it is the delights that accompany love and the pleasures that accompany wisdom, which are feelings, that constitute life. The underlying reality of life manifests itself by means of these feelings. The inflow of life from God brings with it these delights and pleasures the way light and warmth flow in and affect our minds in spring. Light and warmth flow into every kind of bird and beast as well and even into plants, which then sprout and flourish. This is because the delights of love and the pleasures of wisdom open our spirits and prepare them to be receptive, the way joy and happiness relax our faces and ready them for the inflow of the soul’s good cheer.

[3] People moved by love for wisdom are like the Garden of Eden with its two trees, one of life and the other of the knowledge of good and evil [Genesis 2:9]. The tree of life is when we believe that love and wisdom come from the Lord; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is when we believe that these qualities come from ourselves. In the latter case, we are insane, and yet believe that we are as wise as God. In the former case we are truly wise, and believe that no one is wise except God and that people are wise to the extent that they believe this—and even wiser to the extent that they feel they want it to be this way. (There is more on this subject in the account in Marriage Love 132–136.)

[4] In support of this, let me add a secret from heaven. All the angels of heaven turn their foreheads toward the Lord as the sun, and all the angels of hell turn the backs of their heads toward him. These latter are receptive to an inflow into the feelings that belong to their will—feelings that are basically cravings—and constrain their understanding to go along. The former are receptive to an inflow into the feelings that belong to their understanding and constrain their will to go along. As a result, these enjoy wisdom, while the others are deranged.

Our understanding resides in the cerebrum, which is behind the forehead, while our will resides in the cerebellum, which is in the back of the head.

[5] Everyone knows that people who are crazed by false notions go along with the cravings associated with their type of evil and support them with reasons drawn from their understanding, whereas people who are wise see on the basis of truths the quality of the cravings in their will and hold them in check. The wise do this because they turn their faces toward God. That is, they put their trust in God and not in themselves. On the other hand, the deranged turn their faces away from God. That is, they put their trust in themselves and not in God. Trusting in ourselves is believing that we love and are wise on our own, and not from God. This is what “eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” [Genesis 2:17; 3:3, 6] means. On the other hand, trusting in God is believing that we love and are wise from God and not on our own; and this is eating from the tree of life (Revelation 2:7).

[6] We may gather from all this (though only dimly, as if by moonlight at night) that how receptive we are to the inflow of life from God depends on our state of love and wisdom.

We may further illustrate this inflow by the inflow of light and warmth into plants. They bloom and bear fruit depending on the way the fibers that form them are woven together and therefore depending on their receptiveness. We may also illustrate it by the way light flows into precious stones, which turn the light into different colors depending on the positioning of their component parts and therefore again on their receptiveness. Or we could mention prisms and raindrops that make rainbows depending on the angles of incidence and refraction, and therefore on the way they receive the light. Human minds react similarly to the spiritual light that emanates from the Lord as the sun; it is constantly flowing in, but we receive it in different ways.

14. 12 Our understanding can be lifted into the light (that is, the wisdom) that angels enjoy to the extent that our rational ability has been cultivated; and our will can be elevated into the warmth, or love, of heaven, depending on how we live our lives. However, the love in our will becomes elevated only to the extent that we will and do what the wisdom in our understanding teaches us.

THE human mind means the two abilities called the understanding and the will. The understanding is a vessel for heaven’s light, whose essence is wisdom, and the will is a vessel for heaven’s warmth, whose essence is love, as already noted [§7]. These two energies, wisdom and love, emanate from the Lord as the sun and flow into heaven both universally and individually, giving angels their wisdom and love; and they also flow into this world both universally and individually, giving us our wisdom and love.

[2] However, while these two energies emanate from the Lord united and flow united into the souls of angels and people on earth, they are not received by our minds as one thing. The light that builds the understanding is received in us first; the love that builds the will is received only little by little. The reason for this arrangement is that we all need to be created anew, or reformed, and this is done by means of our understanding. From earliest childhood we gain knowledge of what is true and good, knowledge that teaches us how to live rightly, how to will and act rightly. In this way, our will is shaped by our understanding.

[3] This is why we have been gifted with the ability to lift our understanding almost into the light that surrounds heaven’s angels, so that we can see what we ought to will and therefore do in order to be successful in this world, for the time being, and blessed after death, to eternity. We become successful and blessed if we acquire wisdom and keep our will subjected to it. We become unsuccessful and unhappy if we keep our understanding subjected to our will. This is because from our birth our will tends toward evil and even inclines to heinous acts; so if it is not held in check by our understanding it will plunge into unspeakable crimes. Its innate savagery will lead us, purely for self-centered reasons, to butcher and annihilate everyone who does not support and indulge us.

[4] Further, if our understanding were incapable of being separately improved and our will could not be improved by means of it, we would be beasts, not human beings. If it were not for this separation and the raising of our understanding to a higher level than our will, we would not be able to think or express thoughts in speech. We could only make noises to express our feelings. We would not be able to act rationally, either, only instinctively. Least of all would we be able to recognize what comes from God and thereby come to know God and be joined to God and live forever.

We seem to think and will autonomously, and this apparent autonomy allows us to reciprocate and be joined [to God]. This joining would be impossible without mutuality, just as what is passive cannot be joined to what is active without some ability to react to it. God alone acts, and we let ourselves be activated and react just as though we were autonomous, though on a deeper level this ability too comes from God.

[5] Once this is properly understood, we can see what the love in our will is like if it has been elevated by means of our understanding and what it is like if it has not—in short, what it is to be human.

Let me use some analogies to illustrate what we are like if our will has not been elevated by means of our understanding. We are like an eagle that soars high overhead, but at the first sight of prey below that appeals to its appetite—prey like hens or cygnets or even lambs—it plunges down and devours them. We are also like an adulterer who keeps a prostitute hidden in his basement; he goes back and forth to the top level of the house and there says wise things to his visitors about chastity, but then periodically breaks away from the group to go down and satisfy his lust with the prostitute.

[6] We are also like a thief on a tower who pretends to be keeping guard there, but the moment he sees something he wants, he races down and steals it. We can also be compared to swamp flies that fly in a column above the head of a galloping horse, but plunge back down into the swamp when the horse comes to a stop.

This is what we are like when our will, or love, has not been elevated by means of our understanding. It remains down at the level of the feet, sunk in unclean earthly things and sense-centered lusts.

It is completely different for us if we have used our understanding to tame the seductive urges of the cravings in our will. Then our understanding enters into a marriage covenant with our will, our wisdom with our love, and together on high they share a life of delight.