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 fl ow into us. The warmth fl ows 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—fl ow 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 infl ow 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 diff erent 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 infl ow happens.

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

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

§§19–20 / [Concluding Accounts]

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

IF at this point we raise the reasoning of our minds a little above our physical senses, can we fail to see that love is intrinsically alive and that what appears to be its fire is actually its life, and that on the other hand ordinary fire is intrinsically dead by comparison? This means that the sun of the spiritual world, being pure love, is alive, and that the sun of this earthly world, being pure fire, is dead. The same holds true for everything that emanates and arises from each.

[2] There are two things that produce all the effects in the universe: life and nature. If life is within nature and activates it to produce these effects, this accords with the divine design. The other view is that nature is what lies within and causes life to become active. This is held by people who put nature above and within life, even though it is intrinsically dead. As a result, they indulge in nothing but sensual pleasures and lusts of the flesh, and attach no importance whatever to pursuing spirituality in their souls or true rationality in their minds. Because they have turned everything upside down like this, they are called “the dead.”

[3] Theirs is the view held by all the materialistic atheists in the world and all the satans in hell. In the Word as well they are called “the dead”: see in Psalms, for example, “They attached themselves to the Baal of Peor and ate the sacrifices of the dead” (Psalms 106:28); “The enemy is pursuing my soul; he makes me sit in darkness like the dead of the world” (Psalms 143:3); and “To hear the groaning of the prisoner and to open [a door] for the children of death” (Psalms 102:20); and in the Book of Revelation, “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things that remain but are about to die” (Revelation 3:1, 2).

[4] They are called dead because damnation is spiritual death, and damnation is what awaits people who believe that life comes from nature and that nature’s light is therefore the light of life. By doing so they conceal, stifle, and snuff out any concept of God, heaven, and eternal life. This makes them like owls that see light in darkness and darkness in light—that is, see false things as true and evil things as good. Then too, since evil pleasures are their heart’s delight, they are not unlike birds and animals that devour carrion as delicacies and experience the stenches of tombs as perfumes.

In addition, these people do not recognize any inflow other than a physical or earthly one. If they argue in favor of a spiritual inflow, this is not their own idea but something repeated from the mouth of a teacher.

1. THERE have been three grand theories—hypotheses, actually—of the nature of the interaction between the soul and the body, meaning the way one affects the other and cooperates with it. The first of these is known as “physical inflow,” the second “spiritual inflow,” and the third “preestablished harmony.”

The first, called physical inflow, is based on the way things seem to our senses and on the deceptive appearances that result, since it seems as though the objects of sight that affect our eyes flow into our thinking and make thoughts happen. In the same way, it seems as though the conversations that affect our ears flow into our minds and cause ideas to form there. We could say much the same of smell, taste, and touch as well. Because our sensory organs first receive the stimuli that impinge on them from the world, and because the mind seems both to think and to will things in response to those stimuli, the classical philosophers and Scholastics believed that an inflow from our sense impressions impinged on our soul. This led them to come up with the hypothesis that the inflow between the two was physical, or earthly, in nature.

[2] The second view, called spiritual inflow (some call it “occasional inflow”), is based on the laws of the divine design. It sees the soul as a spiritual substance and therefore something purer, primary, and inward; while the body is matter and is therefore coarser, secondary, and outward. In the divine design, what is purer flows into what is coarser, what is primary flows into what is secondary, and what is inward flows into what is outward. Therefore what is spiritual flows into what is material, and not the reverse. To be more specific, the part of our mind devoted to thinking flows into our eyesight in accordance with the state imposed on our eyes by the objects we are seeing, and also imposes its own priorities on that state. In the same way, the part of our mind devoted to perception flows into our hearing in accordance with the state imposed on our ears by what is being said.

[3] The third view, called preestablished harmony, is based on plausible rational fallacies, because when the mind is producing an effect it does so in unison and simultaneously with the body. However, every deed starts out sequential and only later becomes simultaneous. Inflow is sequential, and harmony is simultaneous, as we can see when the mind thinks something and then says it or when it wills something and then does it. It is a rational fallacy, then, to insist that there is a simultaneous aspect yet deny that there is a [prior] sequential one.

These three are the only possible theories—there is no fourth. The soul activates the body, or the body activates the soul, or the two are constantly acting in unison.