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]

7. 5 Both spiritual warmth and spiritual light flow into us. The warmth flows 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.

IT is recognized that absolutely everything goes back to what is good and what is true, and that there is nothing whatever that does not have something in it that is related to these two realities. That is why there are two vessels of life in us, a vessel for what is good, called our will, and a vessel for what is true, called our understanding. Since what is good has to do with love and what is true has to do with wisdom, our will is a vessel for love and our understanding is a vessel for wisdom.

The reason what is good has to do with love is that we will what we love, and when we do what we love we call it a good thing. The reason what is true has to do with wisdom is that all wisdom is based on truths. In fact, when wise people think of doing something good, that thought is a truth; and it becomes something good when they will it and do it.

[2] If we do not make the proper distinction between these two vessels of life, the will and the understanding, and construct a clear idea of their nature, we labor in vain to understand spiritual inflow, since there is one type of flow into our will and another type into our understanding. Into our will flows a love for doing what is good and into our understanding flows the truth that leads to wisdom. Both of these come to us directly from Jehovah God, by means of the sun that surrounds him, and both of them also come to us indirectly through the angelic heaven.

These two vessels, our will and our understanding, are as distinct from each other as warmth and light, since our will receives heaven’s warmth, which in its essence is love, and our understanding receives heaven’s light, which in its essence is wisdom, as noted above.

[3] From the human mind there is one type of flow into speech and another into deeds. The flow into speech comes from our will through our understanding, while the one into deeds comes from our understanding through our will. If people recognize only the flow into the understanding and not at the same time the flow into the will and draw their rational conclusions from this, they are like people who have only one eye and see things from one side only and not from the other. Or they are like handicapped people who twist around because they have only one hand to work with, or lame people who hop along on one foot and a cane.

These few words clarify that spiritual warmth flows into our will and gives rise to a love for doing what is good and that spiritual light flows into our understanding and gives rise to the truth that leads to wisdom.