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.”

(റഫറൻസുകൾ: 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)

60. The opposite is the case with people who read the Word in the light of a false religion’s doctrine, and still more with people who use the Word to defend that doctrine and have an eye then to their own glory and to the world’s riches. In their case the Word’s truth exists, so to speak, in the dark of night, and falsity in the light of day. They read something true, but do not see it, and if they see some shadow of it, they falsify it. These are the people of whom the Lord says that they have eyes but do not see, and ears but do not understand (Matthew 13:14-15). For nothing so blinds a person as his own self-interest and affirmation of falsity. A person’s self-interest is his love of self and his consequent conceit in his own intelligence. And an affirmation of falsity is thick darkness masquerading as light. Their light is a merely natural one, and their sight like that of one seeing apparitions in the dark.