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]

16. 14 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.

INQUIRY into causes from their effects leads to the discovery that there are two different kinds of levels, one kind that deals with prior versus subsequent, and one kind that deals with greater versus lesser. The ones that distinguish prior from subsequent are to be called vertical or distinct levels, while the ones that distinguish greater from lesser are to be called horizontal or gradient levels.

[2] Examples of vertical or distinct levels may be found in the way one thing is generated by or composed of another—a nerve, for instance, is made up of fibers, and each fiber is made of fibrils; or every type of wood, stone, and metal is made of component elements, and each element is made of particles. In contrast, examples of horizontal or gradient levels are things on the same vertical level that lie along a range of greater or lesser length, width, height, or depth—such as larger or smaller volumes of water, air, or ether, for instance, or massive versus miniscule amounts of wood, stone, or metal.

[3] Everything great and small in the spiritual and physical worlds is characterized by both kinds of levels. The whole animal kingdom in this world is arranged in these levels overall and in detail, and so are the whole plant kingdom, the whole mineral kingdom, and even the span of atmospheres from the sun down to the earth.

[4] This means that in the spiritual world as well as in the physical world there are three atmospheres on distinct vertical levels, since there is a sun in each world. However, the atmospheres of the spiritual world are substantial by virtue of their origin; the atmospheres of the physical world are material in origin. Further, since the atmospheres come down from their origins by these levels, and since they are the vessels and, so to speak, the vehicles that transport light and warmth, it follows that there are three levels of light and warmth; and since the essence of the light in the spiritual world is wisdom and the essence of the warmth there is love, as explained in the appropriate section above [§6], it also follows that there are three levels of wisdom and three levels of love, and therefore three levels of life. The levels are characterized by the things that pass through them.

[5] As a result, there are three angelic heavens: a highest heaven, also called the third heaven, where angels of the highest level live; a middle heaven, also called the second heaven, where angels of the intermediate level live; and a lowest heaven, also called the first heaven, where angels of the lowest level live. These heavens are differentiated according to their levels of wisdom and love. Those in the lowest heaven are engaged in a love of knowing about what is true and good, those in the middle heaven are engaged in a love of understanding these matters, and those in the highest heaven are engaged in a love of being wise, which is a love of living according to what they know and understand.

[6] Because the angelic heaven is differentiated into three levels, the human mind, being an image of heaven or a heaven in miniature, is differentiated into three levels as well. This is why we can become angels of one or another of the three heavens; and this happens according to our acceptance of wisdom and love from the Lord. We become angels of the lowest heaven if we accept only a love of knowing about what is true and good, angels of the middle heaven if we accept a love of understanding these matters, and angels of the third heaven if we accept a love of being wise, that is, of living by them. On the division of the human mind into three areas matching the heavens, see the account included in Marriage Love 270.

We can see from all this that the spiritual inflow toward us and into us from the Lord comes down through these three levels, and that it is accepted by us according to the level of wisdom and love in which we are engaged.

[7] Familiarity with these levels is particularly useful nowadays because so many people, not knowing about them, are fixated on the lowest level, where our physical senses are. Being stuck in an ignorance that is a darkness in their understanding, they cannot rise into the spiritual light that is above them. As a result, materialism barges in of its own accord the moment they try to make serious inquiries into anything about the soul, the human mind, or its rational functions, and is even more intrusive if they inquire into heaven or life after death. They become like the people who stand outdoors, telescopes in hand, scanning the skies and uttering meaningless prophecies, or like the people who respond to every object they see and everything they hear by chattering on and on and arguing about it without a trace of rationality or understanding. Or they are like butchers who think they know all about anatomy because they have examined the outsides but not the insides of the organs of cattle and sheep.

[8] The truth of the matter is that unless an inflow of earthly light is enhanced by an inflow of spiritual light, our thinking is a strange dream and our discourse based on this kind of thinking is fortune-telling.

There is more about levels in Divine Love and Wisdom (published in Amsterdam in 1763) §§173–281.

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.