Table of Contents

i. [Introduction] §§1-2

I. There are two worlds: the spiritual world, inhabited by spirits and angels, and the natural world, inhabited by men. §3

II. The spiritual world first existed and continually subsists from its own sun; and the natural world from its own sun. §4

III. The sun of the spiritual world is pure love from Jehovah God, who is in the midst of it. §5

IV. From that sun proceed heat and light; the heat proceeding from it is in its essence love, and the light from it is in its essence wisdom. §6

V. Both that heat and that light flow into man: the heat into his will, where it produces the good of love; and the light into his understanding, where it produces the truth of wisdom. §7

VI. Those two, heat and light, or love and wisdom, flow conjointly from God into the soul of man; and through this into his mind, its affections and thoughts; and from these into the senses, speech, and actions of the body. §8

VII. VII. The sun of the natural world is pure fire; and the world of nature first existed and continually subsists by means of this sun. §9

VIII. Therefore everything which proceeds from this sun, regarded in itself, is dead. §10

IX. That which is spiritual clothes itself with that which is natural, as a man clothes himself with a garment. §11

X. Spiritual things, thus clothed in a man, enable him to live as a rational and moral man, thus as a spiritually natural man. §12

XI. The reception of that influx is according to the state of love and wisdom with man. §13

XII. The understanding in a man can be raised into the light, that is, into the wisdom in which are the angels of heaven, according to the cultivation of his reason; and his will can be raised in like manner into the heat of heaven, that is, into love, according to the deeds of his life; but the love of the will is not raised, except so far as the man wills and does those things which the wisdom of the understanding teaches. §14

XIII. It is altogether otherwise with beasts. §15

XIV. There are three degrees in the spiritual world, and three degrees in the natural world, hitherto unknown, according to which all influx takes place. §16

XV. Ends are in the first degree, causes in the second, and effects in the third. §17

XVI. Hence it is evident what is the nature of spiritual influx from its origin to its effects. §§18-20

16. XIV. There are three degrees in the spiritual world, and three degrees in the natural world, hitherto unknown, according to which all influx takes place.

It is discovered by the investigation of causes from effects that there are two kinds of degrees: one in which things are prior and posterior, and another in which they are greater and less. The degrees which distinguish things prior and posterior are to be called DEGREES OF ALTITUDE, or DISCRETE DEGREES; but the degrees by which things greater and less are distinguished from each other are to be called DEGREES OF LATITUDE, and also CONTINUOUS DEGREES.

[2] Degrees of altitude, or discrete degrees, are like the generations and compositions of one thing from another; as for example, of some nerve from its fibres, and of any fibre from its fibrils; or of some piece of wood, stone, or metal from its parts, and of any part from its particles. But degrees of latitude, or continuous degrees, are like the increases and decreases of the same degree of altitude with respect to breadth, length, height and depth; as of greater and less volumes of water, air, or ether; and as of large and small masses of wood, stone, or metal.

[3] All things in general and in particular in both worlds, the spiritual and the natural, are by creation in degrees of this double kind. The whole animal kingdom in this world is in those degrees, both in general and in particular; so likewise are the whole vegetable kingdom and the whole mineral kingdom; and also the atmospheric expanse from the sun even to the earth.

[4] There are, therefore, three atmospheres, discretely distinct according to the degrees of altitude, both in the spiritual and in the natural world, because each world has a sun; but the atmospheres of the spiritual world, by virtue of their origin, are substantial, and the atmospheres of the natural world, by virtue of their origin, are material. Moreover, since the atmospheres descend from their origins according to those degrees, and are the containants of light and heat, and as it were the vehicles by which they are conveyed, it follows that there are three degrees of light and heat; and since the light in the spiritual world is in its essence wisdom, and the heat there in its essence is love, as was shown above in its proper article, it follows also that there are three degrees of wisdom and three degrees of love, consequently three degrees of life; for they are graduated by those things through which they pass.

[5] Hence it is that there are three angelic heavens: a supreme, which is also called the third heaven, inhabited by angels of the supreme degree; a middle, which is also called the second heaven, inhabited by angels of the middle degree; and a lowest, which is also called the first heaven, inhabited by angels of the lowest degree. Those heavens are also distinguished according to the degrees of wisdom and love: those who are in the lowest heaven are in the love of knowing truths and goods; those in the middle heaven are in the love of understanding them; and those in the supreme heaven are in the love of being wise, that is, of living according to those truths and goods which they know and understand.

[6] As the angelic heavens are distinguished into three degrees, so also is the human mind, because the human mind is an image of heaven, that is, it is heaven in its least form. Hence it is that a man can become an angel of one of those three heavens; and he becomes such according to his reception of wisdom and love from the Lord: an angel of the lowest heaven if he only receives the love of knowing truths and goods; an angel of the middle heaven if he receives the love of understanding them; and an angel of the supreme heaven if he receives the love of being wise, that is, of living according to them. That the human mind is distinguished into three regions, according to the three heavens, may be seen in the memorable relation inserted in the work on Conjugial Love 270. Hence it is evident that all spiritual influx to a man and into a man from the Lord descends through these three degrees, and that it is received by the man according to the degree of wisdom and love in which he is.

[7] A knowledge of these degrees is, at the present day, of the greatest value: for many persons, in consequence of not knowing them, remain in and cling to the lowest degree, in which are the senses of their body; and from their ignorance, which is a thick darkness of the understanding, they cannot be raised into spiritual light, which is above them. Hence naturalism takes possession of them, as it were spontaneously, as soon as they attempt to enter on any enquiry and examination concerning the soul and the human mind and its rationality; and still more if they extend their inquiries to heaven and the life after death. Hence they become like persons standing in the market-places with telescopes in their hands, looking at the sky and uttering vain predictions; and also like persons who chatter and reason about every object they see and everything they hear, without anything rational from the understanding being contained in their remarks; but they are like butchers, who believe themselves to be skilful anatomists, because they have examined the viscera of oxen and sheep outwardly, but not inwardly.

[8] The truth, however, is, that to think from the influx of natural light [lumen] not enlightened by the influx of spiritual light is merely to dream, and to speak from such thought is to make vain assertions like fortune-tellers. But further particulars concerning degrees may be seen in the work on The Divine Love and Wisdom 173-281.

12. X. Spiritual things, thus clothed in a man, enable him to live as a rational and moral man, thus as a spiritually natural man.

This follows as a conclusion from the principle established above, that the soul clothes itself with a body as a man clothes himself with a garment. For the soul flows into the human mind, and through this into the body, bearing with it the life which it continually receives from the Lord, and transferring it thus indirectly into the body, where, by means of the closest union, it causes the body, as it were, to live. From this, and from a thousand testimonies of experience, it is evident that what is spiritual, united to what is material, as a living force with a dead force, causes a man to speak rationally and to act morally.

[2] It appears as if the tongue and lips speak from a certain life in themselves, and as if the arms and hands act in a like manner; but it is the thought, which in itself is spiritual, which speaks, and the will, which is likewise spiritual, which acts, and each by means of its own organs, which in themselves are material, because taken from the natural world. That this is the case appears in the light of day, provided this consideration be attended to: remove thought from speech, is not the mouth in a moment dumb? So, remove will from action, and do not the hands in a moment become still?

[3] The union of spiritual with natural things, and the consequent appearance of life in material objects, may be compared to excellent wine in a clean sponge, to the sweet must in a grape, to the delicious juice in an apple, and to the aromatic odour of cinnamon. The containing fibres of all these are material substances, which of themselves have neither taste nor smell, but derive them from the fluids in and between them; thus, if you squeeze out those juices, they become dead filaments. It is the same with the organs of the body, if life be taken away.

[4] That a man is a rational being by virtue of the union of spiritual things with natural is evident from the analytical processes of his thought; and that he is a moral being from the same cause is evident from the excellences of his conduct and the propriety of his demeanour. These he possesses by virtue of his faculty of being able to receive influx from the Lord through the angelic heaven, where there is the very abode of wisdom and love, thus of rationality and morality. Hence it may be perceived that the union in a man of what is spiritual with what is natural causes him to live as a spiritually natural man. The reason that he lives in a similar and yet dissimilar manner after death is that his soul is then clothed in a substantial body, just as in the natural world it was clothed with a material body.

[5] It is believed by many that the perceptions and thoughts of the mind, being spiritual, flow in unassisted and not by means of organized forms. Those thus dream, however, who have not seen the interiors of the head, where the perceptions and thoughts are in their beginnings, and who are ignorant that the brains are there, interwoven and composed of the grey and white matter, together with the glands, ventricles, and divisions, and all surrounded by the covering membranes; and who likewise do not know that a man thinks and wills sanely or insanely according to the sound or distorted condition of all those organs; consequently, that he is rational and moral according to the organic structure of his mind. For the rational sight of a man, which is the understanding, without forms organized for the inception of spiritual light, would be an abstract nothing, just as his natural sight would be without eyes; and so in other instances.