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]

17. 15 Purposes are on the first level, means on the second, and results on the third.

CAN anyone fail to see that a purpose is not a means but that it leads to a means, and that a means is not a result but leads to a result? Therefore these are three separate things that follow in sequence.

In human beings, the purpose is the love in our will, since if we love something, we set it before ourselves and intend it. The faculty of reason in our understanding is the means in us, since our purpose uses our reason to search for means or efficient causes that will make it happen. The result in us is what our body does in response to and accordance with the above. These three exist in us, then, and follow in sequence the way vertical levels do. When all three are present, then the purpose is within the means, and through the means is present in the result, so that in the result the three coexist. This is why the Word says that we will all be judged according to our works, since in them the purpose (the love in our will), the means (the reasoning in our understanding), and the results (our physical actions) are all together. This means that our works reflect our quality as a whole.

[2] If we do not realize this, and fail to draw these distinctions in the objects of thought about which we are reasoning, we cannot avoid limiting the concepts of our thinking to the atoms of Epicurus or the monads of Leibniz or the simple substances of Wolff, and in effect locking our understanding with a dead bolt. This renders us unable to think rationally about spiritual inflow because we cannot conceive of any process by which it would come about, since the author says of his simple substance that if it is divided it disintegrates into nothing. So our understanding remains stuck in its first light, which is derived solely from our physical senses, and does not move a single step beyond it. We cannot help but think that spiritual reality is merely a rarefied form of earthly reality, that animals possess rationality just as we do, and that the soul is like the breath of air that we exhale from our chests when we die—not to mention other notions that shed darkness rather than light.

[3] Since everything in the spiritual world and in the physical world comes about in accord with these levels, as noted in the preceding section, we can see that actual intelligence is recognizing and distinguishing the levels and seeing them in their sequence. Then too, levels allow us to recognize the quality of all people once we know what they love, since, as noted, the purpose they have in their will, the means they have in their understanding, and the deeds of their bodies follow from their love the way a tree develops from its seed and the fruit develops from the tree.

[4] There are three kinds of love: loving heaven, loving the world, and loving ourselves. Loving heaven is spiritual, loving the world is materialistic, and loving ourselves is body-oriented. When our love is spiritual, everything that follows from it, as forms from their essence, receives a spiritual nature. Likewise, if our main love is loving the world or wealth and is therefore materialistic, everything that follows from it, as derivations from what is primary, receives a materialistic nature. If our main love is loving ourselves, or loving outranking everyone, and is therefore body-oriented, then by the same token everything that follows from it receives a body-oriented nature. This is because when we are possessed by this love, all we focus on is ourselves, so we submerge our minds’ thoughts in our bodies.

Consequently, as just noted, if we can identify someone’s dominant love and the way it moves from purposes to means and from means to results (the three components that follow in sequence according to vertical levels), then we know the whole person. This is how heaven’s angels come to know anyone they are talking with: from the tone of voice they perceive what the person loves, in the face they see an image of that love, and in the gestures they see the shape taken by that love.

8. 6 These two—spiritual warmth and spiritual light, or love and wisdom—flow 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.

THE spiritual inflow proposed by polished intellects of the past flows from the soul into the body. They did not, however, recognize any inflow into the soul or through the soul into the body. Nevertheless it is known that all love for doing what is good and all truth that leads to wisdom flow into us from the Lord; that no trace of love or wisdom comes from us; and that whatever flows in from the Lord flows first of all into the soul, then through the soul into the rational mind, and through this into the constituent parts of the body. If we investigate spiritual inflow under any other framework, it is like damming up the flow of a spring and still expecting a constant stream of water from it, or positing the origin of a tree in its roots rather than its seed, or studying phenomena that are actually secondary without considering their source.

[2] The soul is not life in and of itself. It is a vessel for life from God, who is life in and of itself; and all inflow of life is from God. This is the meaning of the statement that “Jehovah God breathed into the human’s nostrils the breath of lives, and the human was made into a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). “Breathing the breath of lives into the nostrils” means instilling a perception of what is good and true. Then too, the Lord says of himself, “Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has also granted the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). “Life in himself” is God, and the life of the soul is life that is flowing in from God.

[3] Given the fact, then, that all inflow is an inflow of life, that it works through its recipient vessels, and that the central or first vessel in us is our soul, it follows that if we are to understand inflow properly we must start with God and not at some halfway point. If we were to do the latter, our concept of inflow would be like a carriage without wheels or a ship without sails. That is why earlier in this work there was a discussion of the spiritual world’s sun, which has Jehovah God at its center (§5), and of the inflow of love and wisdom—of life, therefore—from that source (§§6–7).

[4] The reason life from God flows into us through our souls into our minds (that is, into our feelings and thoughts) and flows from these into our physical senses, speech, and actions is that the above are the vessels of life in sequential order. The mind is subject to the soul and the body is subject to the mind. The mind has two kinds of life, one belonging to the will and the other to the understanding. The life in our will is the goodness of love, and its offshoots are called feelings. The life in our understanding is the truth that leads to wisdom, and its offshoots are called thoughts. Our mind is alive as a result of our feelings and thoughts. However, the life in our body is its senses, words, and actions. It follows from the sequence in which things occur that these come from the soul through the mind. Just on the basis of this sequence, the wise see all this clearly without having to conduct further research.

[5] Since the human soul is a higher, spiritual substance, it receives an inflow directly from God. The human mind, though, being a lower spiritual substance, receives an inflow from God indirectly through the spiritual world; while the body, being made of the earthly substances we refer to as matter, receives an inflow from God indirectly through the earthly world.

We will see below [§14] that a love for doing what is good and the truth that leads to wisdom flow into our souls together—that is, absolutely united—but that we separate them as they proceed. They become rejoined only in people who allow themselves to be led by the Lord.