Angelic Wisdom about Divine ProvidenceSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Providence and government of God -- Christianity
165. (iii) _Man is led by the Lord through influx and taught through
enlightenment._ Man is led through influx by the Lord because "being
led" and "flowing in" are spoken of love and the will; and he is
taught by the Lord through enlightenment because "being taught" and
"enlightened" are spoken of wisdom and the understanding. It is known
that every person is led by himself from his own love and according to
it by others, and not by his understanding. He is led by his
understanding and according to it only as his love or his will prompts
the understanding, and then it can be said that his understanding is
led also. Even then the understanding is not led, but the will which
prompts it.
The term "influx" is used because it is commonly said that the soul flows
into the body; influx is spiritual and not physical, as we showed above,
and man's soul or life is his love or will. For another reason, influx is
comparatively like the flow of the blood into the heart and from the
heart into the lungs. We showed in the treatise Divine Love and Wisdom
that the heart corresponds to the will and the lungs correspond to the
understanding, and that the conjunction of the will with the
understanding is like the flowing of the blood from the heart to the
lungs.
166. Man is taught, however, through enlightenment; being taught and
being enlightened are said of the understanding. For the understanding or
man's internal sight is enlightened by spiritual light quite as the eye
or man's external sight is by natural light. The two are also taught
similarly; the internal sight, however, which is that of the
understanding, by spiritual objects, and the external sight or the sight
of the eye by natural objects. There is spiritual light and natural
light, one like the other in outward appearance, but dissimilar in
internal appearance. For natural light comes from the sun of the natural
world and so is in itself dead, but spiritual light, which is from the
sun of the spiritual world, is in itself living. This light, not
nature's, enlightens the human intellect. Natural and rational light
comes from it and not from nature's light, and is here called natural and
rational because it is spiritual-natural.
[2] There are three degrees of light in the spiritual world: celestial,
spiritual and spiritual-natural. Celestial light is a flaming, ruddy
light and is the light of those who are in the third heaven; spiritual
light is a gleaming white light and is the light of those in the middle
heaven; and spiritual-natural light is like daylight in our world. This
is the light of those who are in the lowest heaven and of those in the
world of spirits, which is intermediate between heaven and hell; with the
good in that world it is like the light of summer on earth and with the
evil like winter's light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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