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.

19. [Concluding Accounts]

To this I will add the following account of a memorable occurrence. After the above material was written, I prayed to the Lord to be allowed to talk with some disciples of Aristotle, and at the same time with some disciples of Descartes and of Leibniz, so that I could learn their opinions on the interaction between the soul and the body. After my prayer, nine men were present: three Aristotelians, three Cartesians, and three Leibnizians. They stood around me: the ones who revered Aristotle on my left, the adherents of Descartes on my right, and the supporters of Leibniz behind them. Far off at a distance from us and from each other I saw three men who looked as though they were wearing laurel wreaths, and by an inflowing perception realized that they were the eminent philosophers, the founders themselves. Someone was standing behind Leibniz holding the hem of his garment, and I was told that it was Wolff.

When the nine men noticed each other they started by greeting and addressing each other politely. [2] Before long, though, a spirit came up from the nether regions with a torch in his right hand and waved it in front of their faces. At this the sets of three became hostile and glared at each other, overtaken by an urge to argue and debate.

The Aristotelians (who were also Scholastics) went first. They said, “Can’t everyone see that objects flow into the soul through the senses the way people come into a house through its doors, and that the soul has thoughts in response to this inflow? When a young man in love sees his beautiful young bride, is there not a gleam in his eye that carries love for her to his soul? When misers see purses full of coins, surely their senses all catch fire for them, and from their senses they bring this desire into their souls, provoking a craving to take possession of those treasures for themselves. When vain people hear someone paying them compliments, don’t their ears prick up and carry the compliments to their souls? Surely the senses serve as entryways that offer our only access to the soul. In the face of this and countless other examples, how can you come to any other conclusion but that inflow comes from the outside world and is physical?”

[3] While listening to this, the adherents of Descartes were holding their fingers to their foreheads; now they removed them and responded to these statements by saying, “Unfortunately, you are talking in terms of the way things seem. Don’t you realize that our eyes don’t love our young bride on their own? The love comes from our soul. So too, our senses don’t crave the coins in the purses on their own; the craving comes from our soul. Our ears seize on the compliments of flatterers in precisely the same way. Surely it is the faculty of perception that enables us to sense. And perception is a function of the soul, not of a physical organ. Tell us this, if you can: What makes the tongue and lips speak except thought? What makes the hands do work except the will? Our thought and our will are functions of our soul, not our body. What causes our eye to see, our ears to hear, and our other organs to feel things except our soul? These and countless other examples will lead anyone whose wisdom rises above what we sense with our bodies to conclude that there is no inflow of the body into the soul but an inflow of the soul into the body, an inflow that we call ‘occasional’ or ‘spiritual’ inflow.”

[4] When they heard this, the three men who were standing behind the other groups of three, the supporters of Leibniz, spoke up. “We have heard and compared the arguments on each side, and we feel that on many points the second group prevailed, but on many others, the first. So, if you will, let us resolve the dispute.” When they were asked how they would do this, they said, “There is no inflow of the soul into the body or of the body into the soul. Instead there is a total and instantaneous coordination of the two at any given moment, a coordination that our celebrated founder has given the lovely name ‘preestablished harmony.’”

[5] When they had all finished, the spirit reappeared, this time holding the torch with his left hand, and waved it behind their heads, and all their ideas became confused. They started exclaiming in alarm, “Our souls don’t know which way to turn and neither do our bodies, so let’s settle the argument by lot. We’ll accept whichever lot is drawn first.” So they took three slips of paper, wrote physical inflow on one, spiritual inflow on the second, and preestablished harmony on the third, and put them in a hat. They chose someone to do the drawing; the hand went in and pulled out the slip that had “spiritual inflow” written on it. When they looked at it and read it, they all said, “We should accept this because it came out first,” but some said this clearly and easily, while others said it vaguely and hesitantly.

[6] Suddenly an angel stood nearby who said, “Don’t believe that the slip for spiritual inflow came out by accident. This was providential. Since you were caught up in confused ideas, you were not seeing that it was the truth; but the truth itself presented itself as that slip of paper to the chooser’s hand so that you would accept it.”