263. But when the spiritual mind is open the state of the natural mind is wholly different. Then the natural mind is arranged in compliance with the spiritual mind, and is subordinated to it. For the spiritual mind acts upon the natural mind from above or within, and removes the things therein that react, and adapts to itself those that act in harmony with itself, whereby the excessive reaction is gradually taken away. It is to be noted, that in things greatest and least of the universe, both living and dead, there is action and reaction, from which comes an equilibrium of all things; this is destroyed when action overcomes reaction, or the reverse. It is the same with the natural and with the spiritual mind. When the natural mind acts from the enjoyments of its love and the pleasures of its thought, which are in themselves evils and falsities, the reaction of the natural mind removes those things which are of the spiritual mind and blocks the doors lest they enter, and it makes action to come from such things as agree with its reaction. The result is an action and reaction of the natural mind opposite to the action and reaction of the spiritual mind, whereby there is a closing of the spiritual mind like the twisting back of a spiral. But when the spiritual mind is opened, the action and reaction of the natural mind are inverted; for the spiritual mind acts from above or within, and at the same time it acts from below or from without, through those things in the natural mind which are arranged in compliance with it; and it twists back the spiral in which the action and reaction of the natural mind lie. For the natural mind is by birth in opposition to the things belonging to the spiritual mind; an opposition derived, as is well known, from parents by heredity. Such is the change of state which is called reformation and regeneration. The state of the natural mind before reformation may be compared to a spiral twisting or bending itself downward; but after reformation it may be compared to a spiral twisting or bending itself upwards; therefore man before reformation looks downwards to hell, but after reformation looks upwards to heaven. 264. THE ORIGIN OF EVIL IS FROM THE ABUSE OF THE CAPACITIES PROPER TO MAN, THAT ARE CALLED RATIONALITY AND FREEDOM.