Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence Part 9

Therefore, just as the internal is so averse to compulsion by the external as to turn away, it looks so kindly on enjoyment in the external that it turns to it. a.s.sent follows on the part of the understanding, and love on the part of the will.

[6] In the spiritual world all children are introduced by the Lord into angelic wisdom and through this into heavenly love by delightful and charming means, first by pretty things in the home and the charms of a garden; then by representations of spiritual things affecting the interiors of their minds with pleasure; and finally by truths of wisdom and goods of love. Thus they are steadily led by enjoyments in due order, first by the enjoyments of a love of the understanding and of its wisdom, and then by the enjoyments of the love of the will which is their life's love, to which all else that has entered through enjoyment is kept subordinate.

[7] This is done because the will and understanding must all be formed by what is external before they are formed by what is internal, for they are formed first by what enters by the physical senses, chiefly the sight and the hearing; then when a first will and understanding have been formed, the internal of thought regards them as the externals of its thinking, and either joins itself to them or separates itself from them, as they are or are not enjoyable to it.

[8] It should be well understood, however, that the internal of the understanding does not unite itself to the internal of the will, but it is the latter that unites itself to the former and causes reciprocal union. This is done by the internal of the will, not at all by the internal of the understanding. Hence it is that man cannot be reformed by faith alone, but by the love of the will which makes a faith for itself.

[9] Fourth: _There is a forced internal and a free one._ A forced internal is found in those who are in external wors.h.i.+p only and in none that is internal. Their internal consists of thinking and willing what the external is coerced to. Such are persons who wors.h.i.+p living or dead men or idols, or who rest their faith on miracles. No internal is possible with them which is not at the same time external. And yet a forced internal is possible with persons in internal wors.h.i.+p; it may be forced by fear or compelled by love. That forced by fear is found in those who wors.h.i.+p for fear of the torment and fire of h.e.l.l. This internal is not the internal of thought of which we have treated, however, but an external of thought called internal here because it partakes of thought.

The internal of thought of which we have treated cannot be forced by any fear; it can be compelled by love and by fear of failing to love. In the true sense fear of G.o.d is nothing else. To be compelled by love and by the fear of failing in it is self-compulsion, and self-compulsion, it will be seen in what follows, is not contrary to freedom and rationality.

137. It is plain then what forced wors.h.i.+p and unforced wors.h.i.+p are like.

Forced wors.h.i.+p is corporeal, inanimate, obscure and sad--corporeal because it is of the body and not of the mind; inanimate because it has no life in it; obscure for lack of understanding in it; and sad because it does not have the joy of heaven in it. But wors.h.i.+p not forced and real is spiritual, living, seeing and joyful--spiritual, because spirit from the Lord is in it; living, because life from Him is in it; seeing because wisdom from Him is in it; and joyful because heaven from Him is in it.

138. (iv) _No one is reformed in states of no liberty or rationality._ We showed above that only what a man does in freedom according to reason is made his. This is because freedom belongs to the will and reason to the understanding; acting in freedom in accord with reason a man acts from the will by the understanding and what is done in the union of the two is appropriated. Now, since the Lord wills that a man be reformed and regenerated in order that eternal life or the life of heaven may be his, and none can be reformed or regenerated unless good is appropriated to his will and truth to his understanding as if they were his, and only that can be appropriated which is done in freedom of the will and in accord with the reason of the understanding, no one is reformed in states of no freedom or rationality. There are many such states, but they may be summarized as states of fear, misfortune, mental illness, physical disease, ignorance, and intellectual blindness. Something will be said of each.

139. No one is reformed in a _state of fear_ because fear takes away freedom and reason or liberty and rationality. Love opens the mind's interiors but fear closes them, and when they are closed man thinks little and only what comes to the lower mind or to the senses. All fears that a.s.sail the lower mind have this effect.

[2] We showed above that man has an internal and an external of thought.

Fear can never invade the internal of thought; this is always in freedom, being in a man's life-love. But it can invade the external of thought.

When it does, the internal of thought is closed and thereupon man can no longer act in freedom in accord with his reason, nor be reformed.

[3] The fear which invades the external of thought and closes the internal is chiefly fear of losing standing or profit. Fear of civil penalties or of outward ecclesiastical penalties does not close the internal, for the laws respecting them p.r.o.nounce penalties only on those who speak and act contrary to the civil requirements of the kingdom and the spiritual of the church, but not on those who think contrary to them.

[4] Fear of infernal punishment invades the external of thought, to be sure, but only for some moments, hours or days; it is soon restored to its freedom by the internal of thought, which is man's spirit and life-love and is called thought of the heart.

[5] Fear of losing one's standing or wealth, however, does invade man's external of thought, and when it does, closes the internal of thought above to influx from heaven and makes it impossible for man to be reformed. This is because everyone's life-love from birth is love of self and the world, and self-love is at one with the love of position, and love of the world with the love of wealth. When a man has position or wealth, therefore, for fear of losing them he strengthens the means at hand--whether civil or churchly and in either case means to power--which serve him for position and wealth. The man who does not yet have standing or wealth but aspires to them, does the same, but for fear he will lose the reputation they give.

[6] It was said that this fear seizes on the external of thought and closes the internal above to heaven's inflowing. The internal is said to be closed when it makes one completely with the external, as it is then not in itself but in the external.

[7] But as the loves of self and the world are infernal loves and the fountain-heads of all evils, it is plain what the internal of thought in itself is like with men in whom those loves reign and are their life's loves, namely, that it is full of l.u.s.ts of evils of every kind.

[8] This men do not know who fear loss of place and opulence and are strongly persuaded of their special religion, most particularly if this promises that they may be wors.h.i.+ped as holy and also as governors of h.e.l.l; they can blaze, as it were, with zeal for the salvation of souls and yet this is from infernal fire. As this fear especially takes away rationality itself and liberty itself, which have a heavenly origin, plainly it makes against the possibility that a man may be reformed.

140. No one is reformed in a _state of misfortune_ if he thinks about G.o.d and implores help only then, for it is a coerced state; wherefore, on coming into a free state he returns to his former state when he thought little if at all about G.o.d. It is different with those who feared G.o.d in a state of freedom previously. For by "fearing G.o.d" is meant fearing to offend Him, and by "offending Him" to sin, and this comes not from fear but from love. Does not one who loves another fear to hurt him? And the more he loves him, the more he fears hurting him? Lacking this fear, love is insipid and superficial, of the mind only and not of the will. By states of misfortune states of despair in danger are meant, in battles, for example, duels, s.h.i.+pwreck, falls, fires, threatening or unexpected loss of property, also of office or standing, and similar mishaps. To think about G.o.d only then is not to think from G.o.d but from self. For then the mind is as it were imprisoned in the body, so is not in freedom nor possessed then of rationality, and without these reformation is impossible.

141. No one is reformed in _a state of mental illness_ because such illness takes away rationality and thus the liberty of acting in accord with reason. The whole mind is sick and not sane; the sane mind is rational, but not a sick one. Such disorders are melancholy, a spurious or a false conscience, fantasies of different kinds, mental grief over misfortune, anxiety and anguish of the mind over a bodily defect.

Sometimes these are regarded as temptations, but they are not. Genuine temptations have spiritual objects in view and in them the mind is wise, but these states are concerned with natural objects and in them the mind is disordered.

142. No one is reformed in _a state of bodily sickness_ because his reason is not then in a state of freedom; the state of the mind depends on that of the body. When the body is sick, the mind is also, if for no other reason because it is withdrawn from the world. Withdrawn from the world it thinks indeed about G.o.d but not from Him, for it is not possessed of freedom of the reason. Man has this freedom in being midway between heaven and the world, thus can think from heaven and from the world, likewise from heaven about the world and from the world about heaven. So when he is ill and thinks about death and the state of his soul after death, he is not in the world but is withdrawn in spirit. In this state by itself no one can be reformed, but he can be strengthened in it if he was reforming before he fell ill.

[2] It is similar with those who renounce the world and all occupation in it and give themselves only to thoughts about G.o.d, heaven and salvation; on this further elsewhere. If those of whom we were speaking have not been reformed before their illness, then if they die they become such as they were before their illness. It is vain, therefore, to suppose that one can repent or receive some faith in illness; for no deed accompanies the repentance, and there is no charity in the faith; each is oral only and not at all from the heart.

143. No one is reformed in _a state of ignorance,_ for all reformation is by truths and a life according to them. Therefore those who do not know truths cannot be reformed, but if they long for them with affection for them, after they die they undergo reformation in the spiritual world.

144. Nor can one be reformed in _a state of blindness of the understanding._ These also have no knowledge of truths or consequently of life, for the understanding must teach truths and the will must do them; when the will does what the understanding teaches, a man has life in accord with truths. When the understanding is blind, however, the will also is indifferent and acts in freedom according to one's reason only to do the evil confirmed in the understanding, and the confirmation is falsity. Besides ignorance, a religion which teaches a blind faith also blinds the understanding; so does a false doctrine. For just as truths open the understanding, falsities close it. They close it above and open it below, and opened only below, the understanding cannot see truths but only confirm what a man wills, falsity especially. The understanding is also blinded by l.u.s.ts of evil. As long as the will is in these, it moves the understanding to confirm them, and so far as they are confirmed, the will cannot be in affections of good, from these see truths, and so be reformed.

[2] Take, for instance, one who is in the l.u.s.t of adultery: his will, which is in the enjoyment of his love, moves his understanding to confirm it, saying, "What is adultery? Is there any evil in it? Does not the like occur between husband and wife? Cannot offspring be born of it, too?

Cannot a woman receive more than one without harm? How does anything spiritual enter into this?" So thinks the understanding which is then the courtesan of the will. So stupid is it made by debauchery with the will that it is unable to see that marital love is spiritual and heavenly love itself, a reflection of the love between the Lord and the church from which it is derived; is in itself sacred and chast.i.ty itself, purity and innocence; causes men to be forms of love, since partners can love each other from inmosts and so form themselves into loves; nor can it see that adultery destroys this form and with it the Lord's image; and what is abhorrent, that the adulterer mingles his life with that of the husband in the wife, for a man's life is in the seed.

[3] Because this is profane, h.e.l.l is called adultery, and heaven on the other hand is called marriage. Furthermore, the love of adultery communicates with the lowest h.e.l.l, but true marital love with the inmost heaven; the reproductive organs of both s.e.xes also correspond to societies of the inmost heaven. These things are adduced so that it may be known how blinded the understanding is when the will is in the l.u.s.t of evil, and that no one can be reformed in a state of blindness of the understanding.

145. (v) _Self-compulsion is not contrary to rationality and liberty._ We have shown that man has an internal and an external of thought; that they are distinguishable as prior and subsequent or higher and lower; and that being so distinct they can act separately and also jointly. They act separately when a man speaks and acts from the external of his thought otherwise than he thinks and wills inwardly; they act jointly when he speaks and acts as he thinks and wills. The latter is common with the sincere, the former with the insincere.

[2] Inasmuch as the internal and the external of the mind are so distinct, the internal can even fight with the external and by combat drive it to compliance. Conflict arises when the man deems evils to be sins and resolves to desist from them. When he desists, a door is opened and the l.u.s.ts of evil which have occupied the internal of thought are cast out by the Lord and affections of good are implanted in their place.

This occurs in the internal of thought. But the enjoyments of evil l.u.s.t which occupy the external of thought cannot be cast out at the same time; conflict arises therefore between the internal and the external of thought. The internal wants to cast out those enjoyments because they are enjoyments of evil and do not agree with the affections of good in which the internal now is, and wants to introduce in their place enjoyments of good which do agree. These are what are called goods of charity. From the disagreement comes the conflict which, if it grows severe, is called temptation.

[3] Now as man is man by virtue of the internal of his thought, for this is his very spirit, obviously he compels himself when he compels the external of his thought to comply or to receive the enjoyments of his affections or the goods of charity. Plainly this is not contrary to rationality and liberty but in accord with them; rationality starts the combat and liberty follows it up; liberty itself resides with rationality in the internal man and from that in the external.

[4] Accordingly, when the internal conquers, which it does when it has reduced the external to compliance and obedience, man is given liberty itself and rationality itself by the Lord, for he is delivered by the Lord then from infernal freedom which in itself is enslavement, is brought into heavenly freedom which is freedom in itself, and is given a.s.sociation with angels. The Lord Himself teaches ( John 8:31-36) that those who are in sins are enslaved and that He delivers those who receive truth from Him through the Word.

146. Let an example serve for ill.u.s.tration. A man who has taken pleasure in defrauding and deceiving sees and inwardly acknowledges it to be sin and resolves to desist from it; with this a battle begins of his internal with the external. The internal man is in an affection for honesty, but the external still in the enjoyment of defrauding. This enjoyment, utterly opposed to enjoyment in honesty, does not give way unless forced to do so and can be forced to do so only by combat with it. When the fight is won, the external man comes into the enjoyment of a love of honesty, which is charity. Then the pleasure of defrauding gradually turns unpleasant to him. It is the same with all other sins, with adultery and wh.o.r.edom, revenge and hatred, blasphemy and lying. The most difficult battle of all is with the love of ruling from self-love. A person who subdues this love, easily subdues all other evil loves, for this is their summit.

147. Let it be told briefly how the Lord casts out l.u.s.ts of evil occupying the internal man from birth and in their place bestows affections of good when a man on his part removes the evils as sins. It was shown earlier that man possesses a natural, a spiritual and a celestial mind, that he is only in the natural mind as long as he is in l.u.s.ts of evil and their enjoyments, and that during this time the spiritual mind is closed. But as soon as a man on self-examination confesses evils to be sins against G.o.d because they are contrary to divine laws and accordingly resolves to desist from them, the Lord opens the spiritual mind, enters the natural by affections of truth and good, enters the reason, and by the reason puts into order what is disordered below in the natural. It is this that strikes the man as a battle, and strikes those who have indulged much in enjoyments of evil as temptation, for when the order of its thinking is inverted the lower mind suffers pain.

Inasmuch as the battle is against what is in the man himself and what he feels to be his, and no one can fight against himself except from a more interior self and from freedom in it, it follows that the internal man fights against the external and does so from freedom, and compels the external to obey. This, then, is compelling oneself, and, clearly, it is not contrary to liberty and rationality, but in accord with them.

148. Everyone desires to be free, moreover, and to be rid of the unfree or servitude. The boy under a master wishes to be his own master and thus free; so every man-servant under his master or maid under her mistress.

Every girl wishes to leave the paternal home and marry, to do freely in a home of her own; and every boy who desires to work, enter business, or hold some position wishes to be released from his subordination to others and to be at his own disposal. All of these who serve willingly in order to be free compel themselves, and in doing so act from freedom according to reason but from an inner freedom, by which outward freedom is regarded as servant. We add this to confirm the fact that self-compulsion is not contrary to rationality and liberty.

149. One reason why man does not wish in like manner to come out of spiritual servitude into spiritual freedom is that he does not know what either is; he does not have the truths to teach this, and without them spiritual servitude is believed to be freedom and spiritual freedom to be servitude. A second reason is that the religion of Christendom has closed the understanding, and "faith alone" has sealed it shut. Each has built an iron wall around itself in the dogma that theological matters transcend and cannot be approached by the reason, but are for the blind and not the seeing. So truths that would teach what spiritual liberty is have been hidden. A third reason is that few examine themselves and see their sins, and one who does not see and quit them is in the freedom that sins have, which is infernal freedom, in itself enslavement. To view heavenly freedom, which is genuine freedom, from that freedom is like trying to see daylight in pitch darkness or suns.h.i.+ne from under a black cloud. So it happens that it is not known what heavenly freedom is, or that the difference between it and infernal freedom is like the difference between what is living and what is dead.

150. (vi) The external man is to be reformed by the internal, and not the other way about. By internal and external man the same is meant as by external and internal of thought, of which frequently before. The external must be reformed by the internal because the internal flows into the external and not the reverse. The learned world knows that what is spiritual flows into what is natural and not the reverse, for reason dictates it; the church knows that the internal man must first be cleansed and made new and the external by it then, because the Lord teaches it. He does so in the words:

Woe to you . . . hypocrites, for you make the outside of the cup and platter clean, but the inside is full of extortion and excess. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and platter that the outside may also be made clean (Mt 23:25, 26).

We have shown in a number of places in the treatise _Divine Love and Wisdom_ that reason dictates this. For what the Lord teaches He grants man to see rationally. This a man does in two ways: in one, he sees in himself that something is so upon hearing it; in the other, he grasps it by reasons for it. Seeing in oneself takes place in the internal man, and understanding through reasoning in the external man. Who does not perceive it within himself when he hears that the internal man is to be purified first and the external by it? But one who does not receive the general idea of this by influx from heaven may go astray when he consults the external of this thought; from it alone no one sees but that outward works of charity and piety are saving apart from the internal. It is so in other things, as that sight and hearing flow into thought, and smell and taste into perception, that is, that the external flows into the internal, when the contrary is true. The appearance that what is seen and heard flows into the thought is a fallacy, for the understanding does the seeing in the eye and the hearing in the ear, and not the other way about. So it is in all else.

151. But something should be said here on how the internal man is reformed and by it the external. The internal man is not reformed solely by knowing, understanding and being wise, consequently not by thinking only; but by willing what these teach. When a person knows, understands and has the wisdom to see that heaven and h.e.l.l exist and that all evil is from h.e.l.l and all good from heaven, and if he then does not will evil because it is from h.e.l.l but good because it is from heaven, he has taken the first step in reformation and is on the threshold from h.e.l.l to heaven. When he advances farther and resolves to desist from evils, he is at the second step in reformation and is out of h.e.l.l but not yet in heaven; this he beholds above him. There must be this internal for man to be reformed, but he is not reformed unless the external is reformed as well as the internal. The external is reformed by the internal when the external desists from the evils which the internal sets its will against because they are infernal, and still further reformed when the external shuns and fights against the evils. Thus the internal provides the will, the external the deed. For unless a man does the deed he wills, inwardly he does not will it, and finally he wills not to do it.

[2] One can see from these few considerations how the external man is reformed by the internal. This is also meant by the Lord's words to Peter:

Jesus said, If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me. Peter said to Him, not my feet only but my hands and head. Jesus said to him, he who has been washed has no need except to have his feet washed, and is entirely clean (Jn 13:8-10).

By "was.h.i.+ng" spiritual was.h.i.+ng is meant, which is purification from evils; by "was.h.i.+ng head and hands" purifying the internal man is meant, and by "was.h.i.+ng the feet" purifying the external. That when the internal man has been purified, the external must be, is meant by this: "He who has been washed has no need except to have his feet washed." That all purification from evils is the Lord's doing, is meant by this, "If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me." We have shown in many places in _Arcana Caelestia_ that with the Jews was.h.i.+ng represented purification from evils, that this is signified by "was.h.i.+ng" in the Word, and that purification of the natural or external man is signified by the "was.h.i.+ng of feet."

152. Since man has an internal and an external and each must be reformed for the man to be reformed, and since no one can be reformed unless he examines himself, sees and admits his evils, and then quits them, not only the external is to be examined, but the internal as well. If a man examines only the external he sees only what he has committed to deed, and that he has not murdered or committed adultery or stolen or borne false witness, and so on. He examines bodily evils and not those in his spirit; yet evils of the spirit are to be examined if one is to be capable of reformation. Man lives as a spirit after death and all the evils in his spirit persist. The spirit is examined only when a man attends to his thoughts, above all to his intentions, for these are thoughts from the will. There the evils exist at their source and roots, that is, in their l.u.s.ts and enjoyments. Unless they are seen and acknowledged, a man is still in evils though he may not have committed them outwardly. That to think with intention is to will and do, is plain from the Lord's words:

If any one has looked on another's woman to l.u.s.t after her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt 5:28).*

* See footnote at n. 111.

Such self-examination is of the internal man, and from it the external man is truly examined.

153. I have often marveled that although all Christendom knows that evils must be shunned as sins and otherwise are not forgiven, and that if they are not forgiven there is no salvation, yet scarcely one person among thousands understands this. Inquiry was made about this in the spiritual world, and it was found to be so. Anyone in Christendom knows it from the exhortations, read out to those who attend the Holy Supper, in which it is publicly stated; and yet when asked whether they know it, they reply that they do not know it and have not known it. The reason is that they have paid no attention to it, and most say they have thought only about faith and salvation by faith alone. I have also marveled that "faith alone" has closed their eyes so that those who have confirmed themselves in it do not see anything in the Word when they read it about love, charity and works. It is as though they spread "faith" all over the Word, as red lead is spread over writing so that nothing underneath shows; if anything does show, it is absorbed by faith and declared to be faith.

VIII. IT IS A LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE THAT MAN SHALL BE LED AND TAUGHT BY THE LORD OUT OF HEAVEN BY MEANS OF THE WORD AND DOCTRINE AND PREACHING FROM IT, AND THIS TO ALL APPEARANCE AS OF HIMSELF

154. The appearance is that man is led and taught by himself; in reality he is led and taught by the Lord alone. Those who confirm the appearance in themselves and not the reality at the same time are unable to remove evils from themselves as sins, but those who confirm the appearance and at the same time the reality can do so; for evils are removed as sins apparently by the man, but really by the Lord. The latter can be reformed, but the former cannot.