Spiritual Life and the Word of GodSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Spiritual Life and the Word of God
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Spiritual life; Ten commandments; Word of God (Christian theology)
All this makes clear how a man draws and calls forth from the Word in
the letter a natural sense, a spiritual angel a spiritual sense, and a
celestial angel a celestial sense, much as the wood of a tree draws its
sap, the leaf its sap, and the fruit its sap, from the same soil. And
what is wonderful, this is done instantly, without the angel's knowing
what the man thinks, or the man what the angel thinks, and yet their
thoughts are one by correspondences, as end, cause, and effect are one.
Moreover, ends are actually in the celestial kingdom, causes in the
spiritual kingdom, causes in the spiritual kingdom, and effects in the
natural world. (A.E., n. 1083.)
VI. Conjunction by the Word
Since it is from creation that end, cause, and effect shall together
make one, so it is from creation that the heavens shall make one with
the church on the earth, but by means of the Word, when it is read by
man from a love of truth and good. For the Word was given by the Lord
to this end, that there might be a perpetual conjunction of the angels
of heaven with men on the earth, and a perpetual communication according
to conjunction. Without this medium there would be no conjunction or
communication with heaven on this earth. The conjunction and
communication are instantaneous, and for the reason that all things of
the Word in the sense of the letter are as effects, in which the cause
and the end exist together, and the effects, which are in the Word, are
called uses, their cause truths, and their ends goods; and the Divine
love, which is the Lord, unites these three together in the man who is
in an affection for uses from the Word.
How a man draws and calls forth from the Word in the letter the natural
sense, a spiritual angel the spiritual sense, and a celestial angel the
celestial sense, and this instantly, from which there is a communication
and a conjunction, shall be illustrated by comparisons; first by
something in the animal kingdom, afterward by something in the vegetable
kingdom, and finally by something in the mineral kingdom.
From the Animal Kingdom:--From the food, when it has been changed into
chyle, the vessels draw and call forth their blood, the fibers of the
nerves their fluid, and the substances that are the origins of fibers
their spirit, which is called the animal spirit; and this is done
through the vital heat, which in its essence is love. The vessels, the
fibers, and the substances which are their origins, are distinct from
each other, and yet they act as one throughout the body, and they act
together and on the instant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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