# Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence/The General Doctrine

THE GENERAL DOCTRINE.
With the opening of Swedenborg's spiritual senses there was presented to his mind a new field of induction. There was spread out before him a new world, with facts to be studied and laws to be discovered. It was immediately evident that there are two worlds, distinct from each other; one in which all things are spiritual, and the other in which all things are natural. It was also evident that spirits and angels in their own world are in bodies in human form, for he saw them and talked with them. It was also evident that their world was in all respects a world, and not an idea; for he beheld its firmament and landscape, its sun and all proceeding from it, related to his spiritual senses as really, and in all respects similarly, as this world to his bodily senses. It was also evident that the two worlds are perfectly distinct, for he was in both at the same time. He beheld the two worlds and perceived that they answered to each other, as cause and effect. Then it was that his philosophical doctrines of Degrees and Correspondences ​received a new basis of fact, a new field of illustration, and a new significance as to the order and law of creation.
DISCRETE DEGREES.
There are continuous degrees which exhibit gradation on the same plane; as greater or less degrees of light or heat or pressure. So, likewise, there are greater or less degrees of clearness in intelligence or understanding; and greater or less facility of expression in speech. These, however, are only differences of more or less in things on the same plane, and continuous. But the degree which distinguishes the understanding from the speech is discrete, and not continuous. The thought does not shade off into the expression. The thought may be more or less clear on its own plane; and the expression more or less clear on its plane; but the planes are distinct. The thought descends into the speech and clothes itself, and thus takes on a new form and function on a lower plane of existence, without losing its own form and function in the mind itself. It is the efficient cause of which the speech is the effect. The thought is spiritual, the speech is natural. They belong to correlated planes of existence, which do ​not shade off into each other, but are distinct and joined by their correspondence whereby the internal operates into the external, as the cause produces and actuates the effect. Such is the relation of a mental cause to its physical effect; such the relation of the spirit in its own body to the physical body; and such the relation of the spiritual world to the natural world. They are not opposites, they are correlatives: neither are they continuous, but separated by a discrete degree; and they are held in vital connection by Correspondence.
The importance of this knowledge to all psychological certainty is inexpressible. It is the missing link that connects and relates the body and the soul. It is the missing "bridge" by which to pass the gulf that separates the "correlated facts of consciousness and the molecular movements of the brain." And it is important to dwell a moment on this fact of the separateness of the two worlds, which is a revelation, and could never have been discovered except to the seer experimentally in both worlds; but which being known is easily confirmed to reason.
The spiritual world is spiritual. Its substances are spiritual; its forms are spiritual; its forces are spiritual. It is a world with ​sensible phenomena; but it is not therefore a material paradise here or there in the expanse of space. It is within the natural world, not as one box is within another, or an ether in a vessel, but as the man is within his body. The mind, which is the man and in the human form, is while in this world within the physical body; and they correspond part to part to part and function to function. So the spiritual world is within the natural world, and they correspond thing to thing, relation to relation and force to force. This difference Swedenborg expresses by the term Discrete degree, because the two worlds are entirely separate from each other and "must be discerned in distinct separation." The relation and bond between them he expresses by the term Correspondence, because it is the relation of cause to effect. Broadly speaking, the spiritual world and the soul are one degree; the natural world and the body are another degree. And because they are distinct and yet correspond, the spiritual can clothe itself with the natural, and by influx fill and actuate it. Correspondence as the law of relation and influx, "depends with absoluteness upon the separation of the two corresponding sides, spirit and nature, upon their ​discontinuity. If the one ran into the other, they could not correspond; and consequently could not be united; just as if male and female were in one person there could be no marriage." Dr. Wilkinson says with none too much emphasis, "It is important just now to set these most unmystical doctrines or teachings of Correspondence and its necessary discontinuity, before us, because attempt is made in powerful quarters to show that life and nature are continuous and cohere by lines of sameness of law. In short, to show that natural law reigns also in the spiritual world, and thus that there is only one world, which in that case presumably may be the natural world as cognized by the bodily senses. So long as this is held there can be no knowledge of the spiritual world, or the life after death, and the belief in both must be weakened accordingly. And then man's own metaphysics will be the ruler of belief, and will shake hands with all that is worst in materialistic scientism, and take from it the laws with which it traverses religious faith and hope and broadens the public road to agnosticism, or to the positivist dogma of annihilation." Just as surely will the metaphysics ​which seeks to maintain its idealism come to negation of spiritual life by denying to spirit, form or function, unless it admits into its thinking these facts of a distinct spiritual body and a distinct spiritual world.
THE TWO WORLDS.
This entirely distinct but very real spiritual world exists and subsists from its own sun, which is pure love from Jehovah God in the midst of it; and the natural world exists from its sun which is pure fire, in itself dead, but sustained and actuated by influx from the spiritual sun. The author says:
"The reason why there is one sun of the spiritual world and another sun of the natural world, is because those worlds are altogether distinct; and a world derives its origin from its sun; for a world in which all things are spiritual cannot originate from a sun all things from which are natural, for thus influx would be physical, which nevertheless is contrary to order. That the world existed from the sun, and not vice versa, is manifest from an effect of this cause, viz., that the world in all and each of its parts subsists by means of the sun, and subsistence demonstrates existence, wherefore it is said that subsistence is perpetual existence; from whence it is ​evident, that if the sun were removed, its world would fall into chaos, and this chaos into nothing. That in the spiritual world there is a different sun from that in the natural world, I can testify, for I have seen it: it appears fiery like our sun, nearly of a similar magnitude, and is at a distance from the angels as our sun is from men; but it does not rise nor set, but stands immovable in a middle altitude between the zenith and the horizon, whence the angels have perpetual light and perpetual spring. The man of reason, who knows nothing concerning the sun of the spiritual world, easily becomes delirious in his idea concerning the creation of the universe, which, when he deeply considers it, he perceives no otherwise than as being from nature, and as the origin of nature is the sun, no otherwise than as being from its sun as a creator. Moreover no one can apprehend spiritual influx unless he also knows the origin of it; for all influx proceeds from a sun, spiritual influx from its sun, and natural influx from its sun. The internal sight of man, which is that of his mind, receives influx from the spiritual sun, but his external sight, which is that of his body, receives influx from the ​natural sun; and both are conjoined in operation, in like manner as the soul is conjoined with the body."
Spiritual things cannot proceed from any other source than from love, and love from no other source than from the Lord who is love itself; therefore the spiritual sun from which, as from their fountains all spiritual things stream forth, is pure love proceeding from the Lord who is in the midst of it. That sun is not the Lord, but is from Him; it is the nearest sphere around him, from Himself. By means of this sun the universe was created by the Lord.
The heat from the sun of the spiritual world is in its essence love, and the light from that sun is in its essence wisdom; and the heat and light from the sun of the natural world serve them for clothing that they may pass to nature and to man. These things are matters of experience; and as facts can be thought about. As soon as they are considered reason perceives abundant confirmations. "It is well known that in the Word, and thence in the common language of preachers the Divine love is expressed by fire; as when prayer is offered that heavenly fire may fill the heart and kindle holy ​desire. The reason is because fire corresponds to love, and signifies it. That such fire has heat proceeding from it, appears plainly from the effects of love. Thus a man is set on fire, grows warm and becomes inflamed, as his love is exalted into zeal, or into the glow of anger. The heat of the blood or the vital heat of men and animals in general proceeds solely from love which constitutes their life. Neither is infernal fire anything else than love opposite to heavenly love. Thence it is, that the Divine love appears to the angels in their world as a sun, fiery like our sun; and that the angels enjoy heat according to their reception of love from the Lord by means of that sun. It follows that the light there is in its essence wisdom; for love and wisdom are indivisible, since love exists by means of wisdom and according to it. I have often seen that spiritual light," he says, "and it immensely exceeds natural light in brightness and splendor. As light is wisdom, therefore the Lord calls Himself the light which enlighteneth every man. It is believed that natural lumen, which also is rational, proceeds from the light of our world; but it proceeds from the light of the sun of the ​spiritual world, for the sight of the mind flows into the sight of the eye, thus also the light of the spiritual world into the light of the natural world, but not the reverse."
The heat and light from the sun of the spiritual world, and all things which exist from and by means of them, are substantial, and are called spiritual; and the heat and light from the sun of this world, and all things which exist here by means of them, are material, and are called natural. The two worlds are quite similar as to external form, but as to internal form they are quite dissimilar. A spiritual garden, for example, is in appearance similar to a natural garden; but it is living, from the souls who dwell in it, while a natural garden is made with hands. The substances of the spiritual world are living like the mind itself. The desire of the will flows into the thought of the understanding and fashions it to the form of the desire; then the desire in the thought, which is its own form, descending into the imagination, presents itself in a mental picture, which is an object of intellectual sight. All this takes place within the mind whenever we think from affection with desire to create and ​to possess. In the spiritual world its living atmospheres and substances are immediately responsive to the mind's activity, and the idea, which corresponds in the mind to its desire and thought, projects itself into substantial forms in the world external to the mind. The phenomenal spiritual world, therefore, is created through the minds of those who dwell in it; corresponds to the states of the minds through which it is created; and changes with their change. But in this world, the dead materials of nature have to be formed and fashioned into fixed copies of living spiritual forms, into which life, through the spiritual world may flow; just as the mind which would realize here its idea of what it would have, must fashion a copy in inert material substances. The chair is wanted, and thought of, before it is made; in the spiritual world when wanted and thought of it is made, and the owner has it while he wants it; but in this world to have it he must fashion so much dead stuff into the fixed form of his idea, and then he has it to go away from and come back to as he wants it. So of the two worlds in general and particular; all things under the spiritual sun are living, all under the natural sun are dead; ​all things in the spiritual world are momentarily created, continued and varied by living heat and light through the states of human souls; all things in the natural world are created, spaced and fixed in dead material forms corresponding to the living forms of the spiritual world and capable of receiving an influx of life and actuating force through the spiritual world. The natural world is created through the spiritual world. Created through it, it corresponds to it. Corresponding to it, the spiritual world flows into the natural world, and animates and actuates it, as the soul flows into the body,—not as becoming in any way a part of it, but as a distinct actuating form and force within it in all and every part of it. Why is a dead sun and world wanted?
"The cause of the creation of the dead sun is, that all things may be fixed, stated, and constant in the ultimates, and that from this ground things may exist, which shall be abiding and everlasting. The terraqueous globe, in which, upon which, and about which, such things exist, is as a basis and firmament; for it is the last work in which all things end, and upon which they rest. It is also a womb out of which effects, which are the ends of creation, are produced."
We see in the light of this teaching from facts, the error of those who deny a dead material world. Without it there could be ​no creation. Spiritual things could not be permanent. Man could have no personal life; no permanent states. The real reasons of this necessity are finely given by Dr. Wilkinson in answer to the question, "Why is a dead sun wanted?" "For the same reason that the human body is wanted for the inhabitants of nature. Man has to be created; that is to say, separated and distanced from the creator in order that he may be a personal existence. He cannot begin his career in the spiritual world, because then he would be a projection from the Divine into nothing; the concept would be as of a force without a recipient vessel to hold it." This is the root of error, it may be remarked, in all past metaphysics, with its "intellectual entities" and "metaphysical points," and "uncompound substance without body and without parts;" and the modern idealism that discourses of man as "an idea or thought of God," without any personal organism, is equally unreal and unthinkable. Life must have an organism to operate a function; and the organism must be twofold, spiritual to receive life, and at first material to give permanence to spiritual forms, and react against the inflowing life. "Dead matter," continues ​Dr. Wilkinson, "is the only thing that can arrest the divine life, and be animated by it into an appearance of life; which everlasting appearance is man's life. To produce this death matter is the last office of the natural sun. That sun must be dead to effect this end. It is the same problem as man's arising from unconscious enbryohood and infancy into personal and mental existence; he springs from apparent non-entity in these respects into a marked individual. This he can only do through experiences, all of which are transacted and gained through the natural brain and material body. The sun, the fountain of matter, space and time, has to make these conditional things for this use. All mental or personal development, to be lasting, must begin at the bottom; even all angelhood must rise from the ranks, and be a mere private soldier of Christ here, before he is a Captain above. And this is why a mortal or terrene body is required to individualize by the first and lowest experiences, and to make the vessel which hereafter can receive and hold the divine projection of deathless life. We know that matter or dead natural substance exists; we know that our embodiment through it is the condition ​of our being in this world. We know that it fixes us to our place and time. For us that is its function; we know by abundant exact Revelation that when this body dies we are taken out of it and live forever in another state. What then is the office of the matter? To give us permanence here and hereafter. Our higher minds are founded upon our natural minds, whose fixity is taken up into them by an inner and most organic memory of which we are unconscious, but which is the outer vessel of our immortal state. The sun then ministers to this; under divine design it is dead in order to its ministry."
The spiritual world is the world of causes, and the natural world is one of effects flowing from such causes. The living organisms and forms of the spiritual world dispose corresponding forms in the natural world, and rest in them. Life flows in through the spiritual forms, into the inert natural forms, which it actuates and causes to react. Such reaction serves to develope, form, reform and perfect the spiritual.
"Nature is not able to dispose life to anything, for nature in itself is totally inert. For the dead thing to act upon the living, or the dead force upon the living force, or what is the same, the natural upon the spiritual, is quite ​against order, and therefore to think it is against the light of sane reason. The dead or the natural thing may indeed in many ways be perverted or changed by external accidents, but yet it cannot act upon life; but life acts into it according to the change of form induced."
We are to think distinctly, therefore, of these three things: God, the spiritual world and the natural world. God created through the spiritual sun, the spiritual world, an image and likeness of the infinite things in himself which He would put into the making of man's spiritual nature. Then through the spiritual world He created the natural world, an image and likeness of the spiritual, and of corresponding things He would put into man's earthly nature. The end is man, who is a microcosm, embodying in himself a little spiritual world and a little natural world.
THE TWO BODIES.
Man during this life is an inhabitant of both worlds. The spirit, which is the real man, has its own body organized of spiritual substances in the human form, corresponding in every organ and sense with the physical body. The material body is organized of dead substances to be the covering and instrument of the spirit, which is the real ​man. What Swedenborg saw, and knew by living experience, he could urge upon rational grounds. Thus he says: "All the rational life which appears in the body belongs to the spirit; for the body is material, and materiality, which is proper to the body, is added, and as it were almost adjoined to the spirit, in order that the spirit of man may live and perform uses in the natural world, whereof all things are material and in themselves void of life. And since what is material does not live, but only what is spiritual, it may be evident that whatever lives in man is his spirit, and that the body only serves it as an instrument is subservient to a living force. It is said, indeed, of an instrument that it acts, moves, or strikes; but to believe that these acts are those of the instrument, and not of him who acts by means of it, is a fallacy. Since everything that lives in the body, and from life acts and feels, belongs exclusively to the spirit, and nothing of it to the body, it follows that the spirit is the real man, and that the spirit is in a form similar to the body; for everything in him, from his head to the sole of his foot, lives and feels." "From these considerations it may be seen that the spirit ​of man is in a form as well as his body, and that its form is the human; that it enjoys senses and sensories when separated from the body, just the same as when it was in it; and that all the life of the eye, and all the life of the ear, in a word, all the sensative life man enjoys belongs not to his body but to his spirit; for his spirit is in them and in every minutest part thereof. Hence it is that spirits see, hear and feel the same as men; but after separation from the body their perceptions are all of things in the spiritual world. The natural sensation he has in the physical body is by means of the material which is adjoined to it; but even then he enjoys spiritual sensation at the same time by thinking and willing. These observations are made in order that the rational man may be convinced that man in himself is a spirit, and that the corporeal frame adjoined to him for the sake of performing functions in the natural world, is not the man but only an instrument for the use of his spirit."
The question arises here, as to the reason for this connection between the soul and the natural body, and the mode of it. In ​general the answer has been given in what was said of the necessity for a dead sun and material world, and man's birth and experience in it, as a basis and containent of what is spiritual; and more will follow on this point in due course. Dr. Wilkinson has given an illustration of the connection of the spirit with the body, as to its reasons and modes, so striking and helpful that it is introduced here at length.
"The soul is connected with the body for the same reason as we are connected with the persons, objects, and circumstances that surround us, and which answer to our wants and interests. In a similar manner the body answers to the wants of the soul, being the soul's wife, the soul's friend, the soul's house, the soul's office, the soul's universe. It is engaged to the service of the soul; shaped into usefulness by the soul's ministrations. As the hand shapes the pen, and then writes with it, so the soul forms the body, and then makes use of the properties resulting from the form. The connection between the soul and the body is not more mysterious than the connection between the pen-maker and the pen, excepting that our knowledge of the pen is so much more ​complete than our knowledge of the body. A science of the body, had we such that displayed its uses, or its specific fitness to serve the soul, would as evidently give the motives of the attachment of the soul to the body, as the capabilities of the pen account for its connection with the fingers of the ready writer. In both cases it is the bond of service, of liking, of utility; for to intelligent life what other connecting principle is possible? If this is too simple for philosophers, still it is the ground of every connexion they themselves form with man or thing.
"For the purpose of breaking abstruseness from the argument, let us look upon the natural body as the well furnished house, the admirable circumstance and worldly fortune of the soul. Then, steadily regarding the soul as the man, something like the following analogical discourse may result from this point of view, in which we take our stand inwards, to gain distance for the object.
"The soul being the man or real body, the natural body represents the appliances and arts of life, whether economic or aesthetic. The eye is its window, telescope, microscope, and answers to the series of means that transparent substance lends to vision, and which ​are as curious and exquisite for their appearance as they are excellent for use: for the eye receives the finest impressions from things, and gives the finest expressions from the soul. So likewise the ear is the hearing-trumpet of the real body, which would otherwise be deaf to the music of nature; it embraces all the means of reverberation, whether in the free air, or of cheerful voices from household ceiling and walls, or of stately sounds from the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault: in short, both the whole instrumentality and the whole architecture of sound. But the nose is to the real body the prophecy of devices that have not yet entered into arts; full as it is of membranous parterres and vacant aviaries for odors; for hitherto, aromas are but casual visitants; they come and go in brief seasons with the fitful winds, and where is the vessel that can hold them; hence the nose of flesh is deficient in circumstance, and we can only identify it somewhat barbarously as the scent bottle of the real nose. To pass over the other senses, we find that the legs are the outward art of locomotion, from passive to active; from the nails of the toes to the wheel of the knee and the globe of the hip; in short, ​from the walking-stick to the railroad; the real body uses them in nature, whether as the staff of its lowliness, or the means of its swiftness, or the equipage of its pride; they are the columns of movement; the rich soul's carriage, and the poor soul's crutches. But the arms and hands are all the finer machineries or inventions that are wielded directly by the arms and hands of the soul; they are the pen and the sword; the instrument of many strings; strength and manipulation in their bearings; in short, the mechanics of intelligence, whereby nice conveniences of truth are gathered in the dwelling of the soul. Then the abdomen is its kitchen, preparing from all things in its indefinite stores one universal dish—even the blood of life, to be served in repasts for the spiritual man; the viand of viands, varying from hour to hour, and suited with more than mathematic truth to the appetite and constitution of the eater. Then again, the chest distributes with a power of wisdom dictated from the halls above, this blood, the daily bread and wine of the body of the soul, and the wisdom that ordained, enters the feast, and it becomes a living entertainment. And the brain is the steward and keeper of the animated house, ​receiving order and law from the soul or brain-man, and transplanting them into its mundane economy. Yea, and the brain is its natural universe, its wide spread landscapes, its illimitable ocean, its royal library, studio, theatre, church, and whatever else is a place of universal light and contemplation. And lastly, the skin is the dress of the soul in every kind, convenient, beautiful, official; and it is also the very mansion itself; for our houses are but the largest suits, admitting our domestic movements.
"By this artifice of holding out our bodies before us, we illustrate in a plain way, the connection or Correspondence between the soul and the body; and though there be other motives of connection, it is sufficient to remark for the present, that by the foregoing signs, it is because the body is so replete with exquisite convenience, that it is the domestic establishment of the soul. Given a tenement of the kind, so royal with apparatus, and it is impossible that the soul, to whose wants it answers, should not live in it, and use, that is to say, animate it. If the soul were not a tenant on such invitation, it would be stupider than the birds and beasts, which are drawn by far lesser affinities to their own convenient lairs."
​"When we speak of the connexion between the body and the soul, we are apt at first to think, that it is a single link or act, but this is an insufficient conception. There are as many different modes of connection as there are wants in the soul, and organs, parts and particles of the body. There are as many different modes as there are possible species of contact in the great and the little creation. The soul is connected in one way with the brain, in another with the lungs, in another with the belly, again in another with the skin. To make this clear, recur to the house and its furniture. The inhabitant owns everything contained in it. Upon one piece of furniture he reclines, upon another he sits, at another he writes, upon others he treads; some contain his viands, some delight him with harmonious sounds, and some look down from his walls, and gratify him by arts and proportions; and with all these, and many more, he is connected. Now in each case it is the shape, make, form, or properties whereby the thing serves its purpose, that is the means of his connexion with it. If he sits at his desk, it is because it is such or such a structure, and serves him for ​reading and writing; he never makes a mistake of sitting for these purposes at his coal-skuttle. Apply this to the body, and we find that its dweller uses every implement there also according to its form. The reverent soul kneels in the knees, because they are natural kneelers. The enquiring soul peers through the eyes, for they are born windows. The make of the organ is the handle whereby the inner man grasps and uses it."
In general then man lives first in this world as to his conscious sensations, plans and determinations, by virtue of the fact that his spiritual body is clothed in a corresponding and perfectly adjusted physical body, through which his senses open out upon the natural world. Its objects and relations thus supply him with objects of affection and thought, which in the mind become again the object of a higher thought and more interior affection. At the death of the physical body, which consists in such disorder and disarrangements of parts that it no longer corresponds to the spiritual body, nor fits the mind as an instrument, whence the spirit is unable to inflow and actuate it, then the man awakes to sensible cognizance of the objects of the ​spiritual world. During this life, however, he is as to his spirit present in the spiritual world, though not sensibly perceiving it; and is in unconscious association with spirits who have put off the material body and live consciously in that world. By means of such unconscious association with spirits, affections, thoughts, ideas and impressions are awakened, formed, modified and multiplied in man, and adopted by him as his own in freedom according to the thought of his reason.
MENTAL PHENOMENA.
Spirits do not know that they are with man, any more than man knows he is with spirits. Both may know it in a general way from doctrine, but neither perceives the other under ordinary conditions. Spirits perceive man's thoughts and feel his affections as their own, and think of them as in their own minds, and thus modify, multiply and extend them in their own experience. This action of the spirits with man is in turn communicated to his mind; then thoughts and affections flow in and are perceived by him as his own. This fact, together with certain laws of the spiritual world, being known, mental ​phenomena, which have been found perplexing, are easily explained.
Space and time, for example, in the spiritual world, are not fixed and permanent, irrespective of the percipient, but are dependent upon the changing states of the spirits and angels. This distinction between the two worlds has already been pointed out, and referred to the law that one world is alive and the other dead. It results that thought directed to another brings presence, and thought from affection or desire brings association and conjunction of minds. You cannot love the same evil without having its infernal crew for your intimate bosom companions; and the thoughts the activities of your love awaken in them, will be communicated to your own minds. You cannot love any heavenly good, or think any divine truth which is an object of angelic thought and love, without bringing the angels present and the activities of their love into your own mind.
Then again, phenomena in the spiritual world are produced by the projection of the states of the beholders upon its background of substance, and are more or less permanent according to the permanence of the states producing them.
​1. There are the real appearances and scenery of that world produced from the common and abiding states of those who inhabit and use them, and continuing with modifications according to the variations of those states. The heavenly habitations, for example, are permanent because the fundamental states of the dwellers in them are permanent; but they are constantly varying like living things, because the fundamental states of character are ever experiencing variations.
2. There are also in the spiritual world representative forms capable of being produced and modified at will for specific purposes, as if an artist might project his ideal upon the canvas without brush or pigments, by willing and thinking it there.
3. There are also, magical representations capable of being produced in the same way, which represent no reality, but only the phantasy which, for evil purposes, mischievous spirits desire to induce and make appear as real.
It will appear then from man's unconscious association with spirits, and these universal facts of the spiritual world, how certain mental phenomena are to be explained.
​Man being as to his spirit in the spiritual world, in unconscious association with spirits there, who were once men and women on earth, the activities of their affection and thought flow in to excite, accelerate, and modify in a thousand ways man's thoughts, ideas and feelings. Affections are excited, thoughts called forth and others injected; and they are entertained, and rejected or accepted, according to man's will and bent, as his own. Thence come not only the poet's inspiration, the author's flight of imagination, the inventor's insight, and the merchant's foresight, but all forms of mental activity in wakefulness and sleep, in sound and unsound minds, as man's dominant purpose determines his spiritual associates. His associates will be such as correspond to the affections of his love which determine his thoughts. The spirits with him are of the same general state as he is; good spirits associated with heaven, and operating into and by corresponding affections and thoughts good and true; and evil spirits associated with hell, and operating into and by corresponding evil affections and appetites, and falsities and fallacies.
The phenomena of dreams have in this ​their explanation. Sleep being partial through any of many possible mental and physical conditions, associate spirits approach, and carry on a train of thought previously engaged in, or inject by their own thinking new and incongruous ones, and present real or fantastic images to the sight of the imagination. The will being unconscious, and an abnormal state giving them access to the mental organism, they can do with, and present before the mind, what they will.
Man's freedom and rationality being impaired by mental conditions, caused by a disorderly life or by some injury to the mind's instrument, the physical brain, as in the various forms of insanity, spirits can possess and dictate his actions according to their conceits, even in direct opposition to his prevailing character before disease.
As a man in a mob without the guidance of reason may do what the mob wills and impels; so a man may from mental causes bring himself into spiritual associations, which, in a moment of excitement or sudden provocation will prove too strong for his judgment, and carry him away into a fit of so-called "emotional insanity." By ​harboring hatred and revenge, and brooding over a special grievance, or by habitual indulgence of passion, man associates with himself spirits who may in a moment tear him away from all thought of restraint, and lash him into the act of murder. So of other passions. So on a high tower, if he dwells with fear on the possibility of falling. So in the presence of an epidemic of disease, or of any danger, if he dwells upon the subject long or morbidly, he puts himself into the power of spirits, and, becoming a prey to the panic which they induce, arrests or disorders the common influx into the bodily organs, and opens the way for evil spirits to flow in and control the functions of both mind and body.
It has been said that though man even while living in this world is in the midst of spirits, yet the spirits are not aware that they are with man, any more than he is conscious of their presence. "The reason is that they are conjoined immediately as to the affections of the will, and mediately as to the thoughts of the understanding; for man thinks naturally and spirits think spiritually, and natural thought and spiritual make one only by correspondence." Mediumship, as in spiritualism, clairvoyance, and occult ​adeptship, constitutes an infraction of this order. In such cases spirits invade man's consciousness through the consent or collapse of his freedom and rationality. They enter into his thought and memory, and thus possess and control all his mental and bodily faculties. The controling spirit once having gained posession of the will and memory of the medium, may talk or write under any name, relate events, locate stolen property, or reveal anything within the contents of the memory of the medium, or any person or spirit present; he may, from his superior knowledge of causes and their tendency to results, even foretell events to an extent. He can induce subjective states which, flowing down into the plane of sense, become illusions and apparitions, which are perceived as altogether real things; and so far as any persons bring themselves into consulting sympathy with the medium and his controlling spirits, these illusions may be induced upon them also, so that they would believe and declare the sensation to be objectively real, when it is not in the least so. The old necromancy and enchantment, when not the pretense of wicked men, was the trick of wicked spirits performed in this way through ​susceptible mediums. Such communication is fraught with danger to the soul, because "when spirits thus speak with man they are in the same principles as the man with whom they speak, whether they are true or false; and further, they call them into activity, and by means of their own affection conjoined to that of the man strongly confirm them." Hence it is evident that the spirits who speak with man, or operate manifestly upon him, are similar to himself; in similar affection, and thus in similar thought; and as when "the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch," they can only confirm each other in their common principles.
Mesmerism belongs to the same class of phenomena, only in this case the control is limited to the will and knowledge of the mesmerizer, who can only impress his own thoughts and determinations on the subject, but can not enter into his memory unless he be at the same time a mind-reader.
Mind-reading and thought transference is often the result of undeveloped mediumship, and is accomplished by means of spirits who take from one and give to the other. It is possible, however, for one mind in full possession of itself and utterly free from trance ​to receive impressions from and give impressions to another mind. It is the common law of the spiritual world, and only requires a sensitive subject capable of a degree of abstraction from the bodily senses. Spirits are always communicating their thoughts, and reading ours as their own; and given a fit subject with attention fixed upon another with strong desire to read what is in his mind, or with thought determined to another in strong desire to impress it, and he may take or give as really, if not as readily, as if both were in the spirit.
Co-incidences, premonitions and warnings are to be similarly explained. Spirit communicates with spirit, in the common atmosphere of the spiritual world, with a whole company of sympathizing spirits living entirely in that world, to help on the communication. Impressions conveyed in this way may be perceived even as sensations, though no natural sight or sound, or other bodily sensation, is actually produced, but only the appearance of such, presented subjectively and perceived in the mental plane of the senses
SOURCES OF INFLUX.
It will be seen from the foregoing that the ​spiritual world is the source of all the life of man in nature, invisibly influencing the course of all things here. "The spiritual world contains, and in a manner consists of all the men and women who have ever died on earth. They are an all-prevalent plane of induction over us, most closely united to us by our individual and special correspondence with them." The spiritual world consists of Heaven, Hell and the world of spirits, intermediate between them. It is thus divided by the necessary separation of the wholly good from the wholly evil, and of both from those who are in the undeveloped state which belongs to men on earth and spirits recently entered into the spiritual world. Let us endeavor now to understand this distinction. Man in the world lives two lives; one internal and the other external; for he can think one thing and say another, or will one thing and do another. One is the life of the interiors and the other of the exteriors of his spirit; for what the body does, is only an effect from the interiors and exteriors of his spirit, since the body is only an instrument. From external thought and affection one may talk of love to the neighbor and love to God, when yet in his ​internal affection and thought he neither fears God nor cares for his neighbor. He may also see and judge of his exterior thought from the interior; he may see the evils of his external life and judge and combat them them from interior purpose. On the other hand he may see what is just and right from interior thought, and from exterior thought and affection incline to the opposite. He may even love what is just and right as to his interiors, and yet in his exterior thought and affection from want of instruction or from the power of habit, or failure to conquer and conform the exterior to the interior, he may do things contrary to what is just and right. All men in this life are more or less in this conflict, or non-correspondence, between the interior and exterior life. They enter the spiritual world in this mixed state of good and evil, truth and falsity. Their judgment consists in the revelation of the quality of their ruling, which is the interior, love; and in reducing exteriors into conformity with it, and in their further instruction and preparation for heaven if good, or on the contrary for their final home among the evil in hell.
All men pass first, therefore, into an ​intermediate world of spirits, where they are judged, instructed, disciplined and prepared for their final home. This is a gradual work, requiring many changes of state, answering to a lapse of time with us. When we consider the immense number constantly entering the spiritual world, one, it has been estimated, with every swing of the pendulum; when we consider the state of most, their ignorance of spiritual things, their involvement in complex thoughts and affections, and how few of even the interiorly good are in the knowledge and life necessary to bring their exterior life into harmony and correspondence with their interior will and purpose; the changes, and the lapse of time necessary for the working out of the interior love into the whole exterior life and thought,—we may form some conception of the multitudinous population of the world of spirits, and the complex influences upon human minds of which it is the source. It is in immediate association with this world of recently departed spirits, that man as to his spirit lives.
The first state of man in the world of spirits is similar to his state in society here, except an increased sense of life and freedom above what he enjoyed in this world. He ​observes how others speak and act, and adapts himself to them, and to his surroundings, as he had been used to do in the world, by the exteriors of his spirit. He inquires for friends, meets them and talks with them. He learns about the nature and laws of that world; and as he becomes accustomed to his new life his sense of freedom is increased, and where he felt obliged to conceal and dissemble his affections and thoughts he finds himself less inclined, and is less able to do so. The pressure of his interior life to express itself reveals the state of his ruling love and brings the exteriors into conformity with it. He must become the form of his own love and nothing else. Everything that is not in agreement with it must be cast off. This is the divinely appointed order; and this is the judgment. Thus the evil are separated from the good, and man comes into his own life and remains in it forever. It is the life of hell with those who have loved themselves and the world above all things; and it is the life of heaven with those who have loved the Lord above all, and their neighbor as themselves. The evil cast themselves into hell; and the good, after preparation by instruction, are conducted under the Lord's auspices to their place in heaven.
​There are three heavens and innumerable societies in each, arranged according to the varieties of love and intelligence with the angels. So also with the hells which are the inversion of the heavens. The angels are happy because they are in a state of order, their interiors and exteriors being in correspondence, in conjunction with the Lord, in harmony with each other, and surrounded by corresponding forms of order and beauty. But the wicked spirits are unhappy in hell, because they are in a state of disorder, at enmity against the Lord, in conflict with each other, and surrounded by the forms of their internal barrenness of life and desolation of delight.
The life of the Lord through heaven, flows into the good in the world of spirits; and thus by them is adapted to man. The life of the Lord perverted into the opposite in the hells, flows into the interiorly evil in the world of spirits; and thus, by them is applied to the evils and falsities in man, exciting, confirming and augmenting them.
Thus all men are subject to influx in "three great directions, namely: laterally, vertically and abyssally. The vertical influx is from ​heaven, which maintains all order and keeps all things alive. The lateral influx is from the world of spirits; and from the good and evil populations on the earth in connection with them. The abyssal influences are from the hells, from which disease and death perpetually assault us. All these are of human conditions, and are virtually 'in us, from us, and of us.' They are firmaments of influx above and below, and operate by induction; they are forces of influx at the sides, and act by spiritual pressure. Hence it is that evil powers operate generally and not according to the lives of individuals. Wherever a swamp and putridity of circumstance lies, they are congenially attracted, and godly and godless folk are smitten if they dwell upon that region. All who do not dwell there, if they correspond to the infernal influences in their lives and characters, will in the hereafter likewise perish.' "
CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX.
We are now prepared to enter more fully into the consideration of Correspondence and influx. Correspondence is of the natural world with the spiritual; of the internal with the external. It is the law of the causal ​relation of the two worlds; and thus of causes and effects in either world separately. The whole natural world corresponds to the whole spiritual world; and every single thing in the natural world to something in the spiritual world which is its cause. Thus heat corresponds to love, and light to wisdom; the heart corresponds to the will and the affections, and the lungs to the understanding and its thoughts. "The spiritual term is on one side and the natural on the other, and the two are equated; what love is in the spiritual world and in man, that heat is in the natural world and in the human body; what the will and the affections are in the soul, that the heart and the streaming arteries are in the body; what the understanding and the thoughts are in the mind that the lungs and their internal ramifications and air-cells, and their breaths and breathings, are in the deep places of the chest. Everything, in short, corresponds to some spiritual thing; is in active partnership with it; and could not long exist without it."
All and everything in the created universe has such correspondence with man that it may be said that man is a little universe. All and everything in man which is ​according to order, is an image and correspondent of God-Man. Correspondence is, therefore, first between God, who is Absolute Man, and the whole heaven, which is in the human form from Him. God is very Man. In the heavens there is no other idea of God but the idea of a Man; because the divine principles which cause the angels to be angels, taken together are God, and every angel is a man, and every angelic society is in the human form, and the whole heaven is a Grand Man, from correspondence with His Infinite Manhood. An Eternal Mind is an eternal Man. This is the God of Revelation, who is a Divine Person of Infinite Love and Wisdom, capable of showing Himself to men as a Divine Man, and desiring to be known and worshipped as a loving and wise God in human form. "God is Man," is the postulate of reason also. Nothing proceeds out of anything except it first be in it; and the spiritual and natural worlds conspiring to the human form, and to the service of men and angels, who are "men in lighter garment clad," can only proceed from a God who is Absolute Man, and who produces from Himself more and more perfect images of His Manhood.
In the work on Heaven and Hell, ​Swedenborg shows in order: I. That the Lord i.e. the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah in His Divine Humanity, is the God of heaven. II. That the Divine of the Lord, i.e. the divine love and wisdom proceeding from Him, makes heaven. III. That heaven consists of innumerable societies; and that every society is a heaven in less form, and every angel in least. IV. That every angel is in a perfect human form; every society of angels, in a larger and more perfect human form; and the whole heaven in one complex, as one Grand Man. All this because the Lord who is God Man creates men images and likenesses of Himself as to the human form, with indefinite varieties of that form; so that when brought into true order by regeneration, each may image the Lord differently from all others, and out of the harmony this variety, may be constituted one grand image and likeness of the infinite things in the Lord. Thus it is that the whole heaven corresponds on the one hand to the Lord, and on the other to the human form, or to the members, organs and viscera in man. On the one hand the spiritual organic form of the angel, corresponds to principles in the Lord and from Him; and because ​there is correspondence there is influx and reception of those principles. It is thus the life of the Lord makes the life of the angel, not by continuity but by correspondence; by similarity of form, and co-operation of the form actuated with the principle actuating. On the other hand the angelic form corresponds to some specific organic form in the human body, and the life of the angel to the function of that organ. And as all the members and organs of the body are grouped and related according to function to the whole human form and orderly life of man; so the angels are associated according to similarity of life, and related to the whole human form, by the Divine Human of the Lord which flows in and is received by each according to his relation to the whole. By correspondence with the Lord, heaven receives His life, each for all and all for each; by correspondence with the human form, all things in man subsist through heaven from the Lord.
This explanation is offered to guard against the conclusion that because the Lord is the only life, therefore the life of angel or man is the Lord's life, and that man or angel is the Lord. The Lord is the only ​life, and angels are only recipient forms of that life; they are recipients of it because their angelic forms correspond. When the divine life with its goods and truths, flows into the corresponding angelic forms, it take on new forms and functions which are angelic life; when this life again flows down into the corresponding forms of man's natural mind, it is neither divine nor angelic life, but it corresponds to them, i.e., it takes on new forms and functions which are man's natural life; and finally, when life flows down into the corresponding organs of the body, it takes on new forms and functions corresponding with the others but distinct from them. The idea of the Lord and of heaven, and of the organs and functions of the body, is therefore to be an idea of distinct things which correspond; the external is an image of the internal, and the life and function it receives is on its own plane like that of the internal on its plane. Correspondence is of the Lord with heaven; thus of the highest heaven with the middle heaven, of the middle heaven with the lowest; then a correspondence of heaven with the corporeal forms in man, which are called his organs, members and viscera. This correspondence ​is described by Swedenborg, as follows, in the work on "Heaven and Hell":
"Heaven is distinguished into two kingdoms, of which one is called the celestial kingdom, and the other the spiritual kingdom. The celestial kingdom in general corresponds to the heart, and to all things of the heart in the whole body; and the spiritual kingdom to the lungs, and to all things of the lungs in the whole body. The heart and the lungs also make two kingdoms in man; the heart reigns there by the arteries and veins, and the lungs by the tendinous and motor fibres, both of them in every force and action. In every man, in his spiritual world, which is called his spiritual man, there are also two kingdoms; one is of the will and the other is of the understanding; the will reigns by the affections of good, and the understanding by the affections of truth: these kingdoms also correspond to the kingdoms of the heart and lungs in the body. In like manner in the heavens: the celestial kingdom is the voluntary of heaven, and there the good of love reigns; and the spiritual kingdom is the intellectual of heaven, and there truth reigns: these are what correspond to the functions of the heart and lungs ​in man. It is from that correspondence that heart in the Word signifies will, and also the good of love; and the breath of the lungs, understanding, and the truth of faith. Hence also it is that the affections are ascribed to the heart, although they are not in it nor from it.
"The correspondence of the two kingdoms of heaven with the heart and lungs, is the general correspondence of heaven with man; but there is a less general one with each of his members, organs, and viscera; what this is shall also be mentioned. Those who are in the head, in the Greatest Man, which is heaven, are in all good more than the rest; for they are in love, peace, innocence, wisdom, intelligence, and thence in joy and happiness; these flow into the head and into those things which are of the head with man, and correspond to them. Those who are in the breast, in the Greatest Man, which is heaven, are in the good of charity and faith, and they likewise flow into the breast of man, and correspond to it. But those who are in the loins, and in the organs devoted to generation there, in the Greatest Man or heaven, are in conjugal love. Those who are in the feet, are in the lowest good of ​heaven, which good is called natural-spiritual. Those who are in the arms and hands, are in the power of truth from good. Those who are in the eyes, are in understanding. Those who are in the ears, are in hearing and obedience. Those who are in the nostrils, are in perception. Those who are in the mouth and tongue, are in discoursing from understanding and perception. Those who are in the kidneys, are in truth which examines, separates and corrects. Those who are in the liver, pancreas, and spleen, are in the various purification of good and truth: and so with the rest. They all flow into the like things of man, and correspond to them. The influx of heaven is into the functions and uses of the members; and the uses, because they are from the spiritual world, form themselves by such things as are in the natural world, and thus set themselves forth in the effect; thence is Correspondence.
"Hence it is that by those same members, organs, and viscera, in the Word such things are signified; for all things there have signification according to Correspondences. Thus by head is signified intelligence and wisdom; by breast, charity; by ​loins, conjugal love; by arms and hands, the power of truth; by feet, the natural; by eyes, understanding; by nostrils, perception; by ears, obedience; by kidneys, the examination of truth; and so forth. Hence also it is that it is usual for a man to say of one who is intelligent and wise, that he has a head; of one who is in charity, that he is a bosom friend; of one who is in perception, that he has a quick scent; of one who is in intelligence, that he has a sharp sight; of one who is in power, that he has long arms; of one who wills from love, that it is from the heart. These and many other things, which are in man's speech, are from Correspondence; for such things are from the spiritual world, although man is ignorant of it.
"But though all things of man, as to the body, correspond to all things of heaven, still man is not an image of heaven as to external form, but as to the internal form, for the interiors of man receive heaven, and his exteriors receive the world. As far therefore as his interiors receive heaven, so far man as to them is a heaven in least form according to the image of the greatest; but as far as his interiors do not receive, so far he is not a heaven and an image of the greatest: ​yet still the exteriors, which receive the world, may be in a form according to the order of the world, and hence in various beauty. For external beauty, which is of the body, derives its cause from the parents and from formation in the womb, and afterwards is preserved by a common influx from the world; hence it is, that the form of the natural man differs very much from the form of his spiritual man. Sometimes it has been shown what the spirit of man was in form, and it was seen, that in some who were beautiful and handsome in the face, it was deformed, black, and monstrous, so that you would call it an image of hell, not of heaven; but in some who were not beautiful, that it was well formed, fair and angelic. The spirit of man also appears after death, such as it had been in the body, when it lived in the world."
In explanation of this last paragraph, it should be borne in mind that there is a general correspondence of the things of the body with heaven, and that all things in order receive a common influx; whereas the disorderly things of man's natural mind correspond with hell, and receive influx ​thence. While therefore the bodily forms and functions correspond in general with the Grand Man, or heaven, and are kept in life and order thence by common influx; they also correspond with the forms and functions of man's natural mind, which are in disorder and, before regeneration, in correspondence with the hells and animated by influx from evil spirits. In so far, therefore, as man's will and thought are evil, he is in correspondence with evil spirits who infest, excite and pour in their evil spheres into his mind; and as hell is the opposite of heaven, and corresponds to the perverted functions of the human form, these evil spheres tend to infest and disorder the bodily functions; though it is of divine order, that corporeal things should be exempt from particular influx. We are told how the conjunction of heaven with the world and with the human form is effected and preserved, and of the way in which man may by the states of his life co-operate with common influx through heaven or disturb it.
"The kingdom of the Lord is a kingdom of ends which are uses; or what is the same, a kingdom of uses which are ends. ​Therefore the universe was so created and formed by the Divine, that uses may everywhere be clothed with such things as to be set forth in act or in effect, in heaven first, and then in the world; thus by degrees and successively even to the ultimates of nature. Hence it is manifest that the correspondence of natural things with spiritual, or of the world with heaven, is effected by uses, and that uses conjoin; and that the forms with which uses are clothed, are so far Correspondences, and so far conjunctions, as they are forms of uses. In the nature of the world, in its triple kingdom, all things which there exist according to order, are forms of uses, or effects formed from use for use; wherefore the things which are there, are Correspondences. With respect to man, as far as he lives according to divine order, thus as far as in love to the Lord and in charity towards the neighbor, so far his acts are uses in form, and are correspondences, by which he is conjoined to heaven: to love the Lord and the neighbor in general is to perform uses. Farther, it is to be known, that it is man by means of whom the natural world is conjoined with the spiritual, or that he is the medium of conjunction: for in him there is a natural world, ​and also there is a spiritual world; wherefore as far as man is spiritual, so far he is a medium of conjunction; but as far as he is natural and not spiritual, so far he is not a medium of conjunction. Still there continues, without man as a medium, a divine influx into the world, and also into those things which are from the world with man, but not into his rational.
"As all things which are according to divine order, correspond to heaven, so all things which are contrary to divine order, correspond to hell. The things which correspond to heaven all have relation to good and truth; those which correspond to hell, to evil and the false."
The spiritual body is in form and quality like the mind, being inwardly pure and orderly if the mind be so, and outwardly beautiful and healthy; while on the other hand if the mind be evil and disorderly the spiritual body is inwardly defiled and outwardly deformed and diseased. And since the natural body corresponds with the spiritual body and derives influx from it, with the adult sufficiently advanced in years it becomes in quality more or less like the mind. Evils ​and falsities, therefore, attract infernal spirits who induce disorders in the spiritual body, whence they are derived into the interior fluids of the natural body, with a continual tendency to disease. "Every disease incident to the human race, comes from sin; every disease also corresponds to its own evil; because everything of the life of man comes from the spiritual world, wherefor if his spiritual life becomes diseased, evil is also thence derived into his natural life and becomes a disease there."
"The reason why diseases have correspondence with those who are in the hells is because diseases correspond to the lusts and passions of the mind. These are the origins of disease; for the common origins of disease are intemperance, luxuries of various kinds, corporeal pleasures, also envyings, hatreds, revenges, lasciviousness, and the like, which destroy a man's interiors, and when these are destroyed the exteriors suffer and draw him into disease and death." Thence it is manifest, diseases also have correspondence with the spiritual world, but with the hells which are opposite to heaven. All the infernals induce disease but with a difference, ​according to their correspondence with the members, organs and viscera. "They act from what is opposite. Heaven, which is the Grand Man, keeps all things in connection and safety; hell as being in the opposite destroys and rends all things asunder; consequently if the infernals are applied they induce disease." They are conjunctively associated with the mind so far as it is in evil and falsity, and thence infest the body. "Evil closes the smallest and altogether invisible vessels, of which the next greater which are also invisible are composed; for the smallest and invisible vessels are continued to a man's interiors. Hence comes the first and inmost obstruction, and hence the first and inmost vitiation of the blood; this when it increases causes disease, and at length death. If man had lived the life of good, his interiors would be open to heaven, and through heaven to the Lord; thus also the smallest and invisible vessels would be without disease, and would only decrease to old age; and when the body could no longer minister to his spirit he would pass without disease out of his earthly body into a body such as the angels have, thus out of the world immediately into heaven."
​Why are not the bodies of the wicked, it may be asked, as much denied and deformed with natural impurity and disease as their minds with moral and spiritual impurity? The answer is in the teaching above quoted concerning the general influx from heaven into the corresponding externals of the body providing that the corporeals of man shall not be controlled by the particular spirits attendant on him. In the evil the vital fluids of the body are always more or less defiled, diseased and infested. Whatever health or beauty appertains to them is secured by a general heavenly influx, from the corresponding parts of heaven, directly into the exteriors of the body.
Evil spirits flow in also by all poisons, noxious and hurtful things introduced from nature, for these correspond to evil, and are produced by correspondence from the hells. And when disease is induced evil spirits then flow into the unclean things belonging to the disease, which correspond to their own evil loves. Their sphere induces anxiety of mind, fear, lusts, cravings and passions, by which again, if not cast off, they defile the vital fluid.
​It was said above that all things which are according to divine order correspond to heaven, and those which are contrary to order correspond to hell. "Whatsoever is in man; whether it be in the external man or the internal, has correspondence with the Grand Man. Without correspondence with the Grand Man, that is heaven, (or with the spiritual world, which is in correspondence with heaven or in the opposite) nothing in anywise exists or subsists, for the reason that it has not any connection with what is prior to itself, thus neither with the first, that is, with the Lord. What is unconnected, and thereby independent cannot subsist a single moment; for the cause of subsistence is connection with and dependence upon that from which is the all of existence. Hence it is that not only all and everything belonging to man corresponds, but also all and everything in the universe."
The angels in one complex, as a Grand Man, correspond to the Lord, and thus infinite things from the Lord flow in according to correspondence. These infinite things become in the angels of heaven ​definite varieties of affection and thought, and consequent determinations to use. All these affections and thoughts of the life of the angels are the causes in and by which the inflowing divine life creates the objects of the heavenly world. The phenomenal world of heaven corresponds in every particular with the affections and perceptions of the angels. Land and sky; gardens, groves, flowers and fruits; animals and birds; habitations, and, in short, all things similar to those in the natural world, are there; and all are created from the Lord as a first cause, through the affections and perceptions of the angels as efficient causes. Everything in heaven, therefore, is in order from the Lord and corresponds with the life of the angels received from the Lord. All things there stand out around the angels, and around the angelic societies as produced or created by them. Those things which correspond to their permanent states remain constant; and those which correspond to varying states come, change and go with the affections and thoughts through which they are produced. The universe of heaven thus corresponds with the affections and perceptions of the internal man, and through these ​with the infinite things of the Divine love and wisdom.
There is with man, however, not only an internal mind, but an external mind adapting him to life in the world first and then in the world of spirits which is below heaven. When man rises out of the world of spirits into heaven, the seat of his consciousness is elevated to his internal mind; but while it remains in the external mind he is in the world of spirits. Now this external mind corresponds to the internal mind, and thus is connected with the Lord; it also creates a world of things around itself and beholds its affections and thoughts reflected in corresponding phenomena. These creations of the world of spirits lie next within the universe of nature, and are the causes and correspondences of the forces, forms and uses in nature. It is thus the Lord operates through heaven and the world of spirits to produce all things in order from Himself, and to sustain and keep all things in order, in heaven, in the world of spirits, and on the earth respectively. "Nothing is given in the created world which has not correspondence with something in the spiritual world, and which does not there in its own manner ​represent something of the Lord's kingdom." "The affections of the Lord's love are infinite, and the perceptions of his wisdom are infinite; and of these all and everything that appears upon the earth are correspondences." In the spiritual world there are similar correspondences with those who receive affections and perceptions from the Lord; there instantaneously created according to the affections of the angels, and here in like manner at the beginning, but clothed with the dead matter of the atmospheres and earths, and continued by procreations for the sake of permanence and re-action. And since all things in order in the natural world correspond to the affections and perceptions of the Divine love and wisdom, and thus to the creations thence in the spiritual world through the minds of those who are there, they also correspond to the affections and thoughts of man's mind. Thus the earth in general corresponds to man as a whole; its various products which serve for the nourishment and sustenance of the human race correspond to the various kinds of good and truth which nourish the life of affection and thought. Animals correspond to affections; the useful and ​gentle to good affections, and the furious and hurtful to evil affections. Birds correspond to thoughts; the good and beautiful to true thoughts, and birds of night and of prey to false thoughts. Trees and shrubs and grasses correspond to different kinds and degrees of intelligence and knowledge. The metals, as gold and silver correspond the one to heavenly good and the other to spiritual truth; brass, to natural good, and iron to natural truth; and common stones to sensual truths, while the precious stones correspond to varieties of spiritual truth.
Now, since the earth and everything on it corresponds to the Lord and the infinite things of His love and wisdom, and thus to heaven and all things there which are correspondences of the affections and perceptions of love and wisdom, it follows that there is an influx from the Lord through heaven, sustaining and ordering all things for use according to the degree and respect in which they are related to man and through man to the Lord. And, since on the other hand, they correspond to the affections and thoughts of man's life, and thus to the spiritual world which is the outbirth and correspondent of his natural mind, it follows that all evil ​affections and thoughts pervert the inflowing life, and tend to disturb order and to produce evil and noxious things in nature. In the hells, and from the hells to some extent in the world of spirits, appear poisonous and hurtful animals, as serpents, scorpions, owls, mice, locusts, frogs, spiders, flies, lice and various parasites; also malignant, virulent and poisonous herbs; and also poisonous earths.
These are mere correspondences of the cupidities which rush out of their evil loves and make themselves visible in such forms to others. The like things in nature flow in from the hells where there are things that correspond. Such things do not derive their origin from the Lord and have not been created from the beginning, and moreover have not been created from nature through its sun. Nature creates nothing; it only receives and clothes what is spiritual; and the Lord creates nothing evil, but man by the perversion and evil use of the Lord's creations. This takes place therefore in the natural mind of man, when the spiritual mind is closed, and his natural affections act against the Divine and pervert all good and truth into their opposites. The evils and falsities thus originated in and by man produce their ​correspondences in the world around him; and wherever there are excrementitious, decaying and malarious atmospheres and matters, they flow in with nature and give rise to the destructive, noxious and poisonous animal, vegetable and mineral creations there. These things correspond in general to the hells, and specifically to those there according to their specific quality. They are permitted for the same reason that evils themselves are permitted; and this is for the sake of man that he may be in freedom; and being permitted and existing, they are over-ruled and ordered to be of use in controlling the evil.
Since all poisonous atmospheres and matters correspond to the hells there is an influx from evil spirits into them; and when they are introduced into the human body the corresponding spirits infest them, and operate through the mind in connection with the body to produce disorder and disease in the body.
It follows from all the facts which have been stated, which are all too meagre to give much idea of man's spiritual position and connections as Swedenborg saw it in the spiritual world, and in the opened Word, that correspondence and influx in every degree ​and sphere of life is manifold. It is general and particular; it is mediate and immediate. The body, for example, corresponds with the Grand Man and with the Lord, and it corresponds with the spirit within it. It receives an immediate influx of the divine life causing it to live and react upon the influx of its own mind, and upon all other general and particular forms of spiritual influx. It receives a general influx through the human form of heaven conspiring to the integrity of its form and the health of its functions. At the same time it receives a mediate influx through the states of the mind, modifying its order and functions according to the affections and thoughts of the man's life. And this mediate influx again is two-fold: general through the spiritual societies in which the man is, and particular through the particular spirits associated with him; and both the general and the particular influx is two-fold, good and evil; for man is connected by his guardian angels and associate spirits with heaven and hell, in general and particular. With all these forms of influx, nature co-operates, because in nature are ultimate correspondences of all things in man both orderly and disorderly.
​In regard to the main subject of this treatise, therefore, these conclusions follow:
1. That all order and health flow in from heaven, and all disease and disorder from hell.
2. That while all things conspire to keep man in order and health, the action of his own mind and his consequent spiritual associations both general and particular, will, so far as he is in evil and falsity constantly operate to disturb that order and induce disease into the body.
3. That since man is connected with the whole spiritual world, both heaven and hell; by his spiritual and natural human form and its hereditary and actual modifications, his diseases are no certain index of his particular spiritual character. But so far as he is in the endeavour to live spiritually according to the laws of divine order he is in internal correspondence with heaven, and all things conspire to the removal of disease so far as evils are removed.
The laws of divine order are the laws of Divine Providence, which is to be conceived of in accordance with the one grand revelation in all the foregoing; namely, that the Lord operates in human life, and through the ​spiritual world into nature, and not as an arbitrary will outside of man and nature. The Divine Providence of the Lord is infinite and eternal; it is general and particular; it is in the good and the evil; and it is, for both, the evolution of the best possible, by the divinely best means. It is the government of the Divine love and wisdom; and these cannot be separated, for the Divine love is infinitely wise and the Divine wisdom is infinitely good. In the Lord are infinite things of love and wisdom and use; from Him they proceed in their own nature and necessity with infinite endeavor to create receptive forms and fill them and relate them into one harmonious recipient and responsive image of the Lord. This is heaven; and heaven is a Grand Man, into whom the Lord's infinite things may be received, and by whom the Lord's manhood may be reflected in reciprocal love, wisdom and uses. This composite man whom the Lord desires, can only be formed of individual free men; and its grand harmony can only be constituted from their indefinite varieties. The Lord, therefore, not only desires human minds to whom He may give the blessed things of his divine mind; but since He has infinite things to give He desires ​various minds to receive and use them. Therefore He created, creates and will always be creating human minds, to be regenerated differently, to constitute distinct and diverse recipients and re-agents of the infinite things of his love and wisdom, and all by their relations to love and wisdom bearing definite human relations to each other. Out of this variety heaven is perfected, and is ever advancing into a more complete and gloriously perfect man.
The subject of Divine Providence, therefore, is man; its end salvation, or heavenly health and happiness for man; and its means are those by which man is perfected as to understanding and will, or the divine truth and order impressed upon the constitution of his two-fold nature and the two-fold universe in which he realizes his life.
As creation and influx is by and in accordance with the correspondence of natural things with spiritual, and of spiritual things with the Divine, so the revelation of divine truth is given by Correspondence. "That there might be conjunction of heaven with man, the Word was written by pure Correspondences; for all and each of the things which are there, correspond. And so, if a man were in ​the knowledge of Correspondences, he would understand the Word as to its spiritual sense and it would be given him to know arcana, concerning which he sees nothing in the sense of the letter. For in the Word there is a literal sense, and there is a spiritual sense: the literal sense consists of such things as are in the world, but the spiritual sense of such things as are in heaven; and because the conjunction of heaven with the world is by Correspondences, therefore such a Word was given, that every single thing in it, even to an iota, corresponds.
"I have been instructed from heaven that the most ancient men on our earth, who were celestial men, thought from Correspondences themselves, and that the natural things of the world which were before their eyes, served them as means of so thinking; and because they were such, that they were consociated with angels and spoke with them; and that thus by them heaven was conjoined to the world. From this, that time was called the golden age; of which it is also said by ancient writers, that the inhabitants of heaven dwelt with men, and had intercourse with them as friends with friends. But after their times those succeeded who thought not ​from Correspondences themselves, but from the knowledge of Correspondences; and there was conjunction of heaven with man also then, but not so intimate; their time is what is called the silver age. Afterwards those succeeded, who indeed knew Correspondences, but did not think from the knowledge of them, because they were in natural good, and not as the former in spiritual good; the time of these was called the copper age. After their times, man became successively external, and at length corporeal, and then the knowledge of Correspondences was altogether lost, and with it the conception of heaven and of most things which are of heaven."
Thus we learn that primeval men, in the infancy of the race, had no need of the external verbal forms to guide them into the apprehension and perception of the truth. They were simple, open, sincere, affectionate, and true. The Word which was with God, and was God flowed into them as the impulse of divine life, and thus as a living light. They were capable of holding communion with God by means of His love and wisdom "written on their hearts." They were capable thus of loving ​what He loved, and lived in open perception of His wisdom. Heaven and earth were united in man. The earth which the Word had made in the image of its powers and attributes, and the heaven which the Word had begotten in man by regeneration, were in correspondence and harmony, and the whole phenomenal world was a mirror of divine intelligence, wisdom, peace, and love. They had no need of a written Word; its light shone within them, and its truths were reflected in every phenomena of the Word's creation. They saw the Logos in the Cosmos. They needed no other instruction from without, no authority to coerce, no reasons to persuade for to what is good they had a "yea" implanted in the will, and to what is evil a "nay." Of course, creation was to them an open book of symbols, in which they read mental processes, spiritual principles, and divine ends, as we read ideas in words, with scarcely more thought of the things than we have of the words on the printed page, from which we seek only the meaning. Creation itself was the first Bible. There is such correspondence between the visible and invisible worlds, that we all, in our lucid moments, seek to ​translate outward phenomena into spiritual principles and mental processes; and this they perceived intuitively from the divine Spirit which then, in orderly influx, was communicated from the Lord without the need of a written Word. Thus the Word, the wisdom of God and the light of man, spoke itself in their hearts and pictured itself in the world.
Then they fell away. Some, then others, and more and more, allowed themselves to delight in sensuous things for their own sake, instead of regarding them as the means of heavenly intelligence and use. Then they lost their interior perception of the truth. The transition was something like that from infancy to childhood, in which the senses assert themselves, dependence gives place to self-assertion, intuition gives place to curious investigation. The transition was gradual, but it sped on. It involved more and more. They regarded their wisdom as their own, and felt themselves gods. They grew spiritually stupid, and could not hear the voice of the Word within.
How shall God now instruct men and make His wisdom known and carry over the life of his love into their souls? He is ​no further off; there is no break in His two-fold universe of which man is still an inhabitant. The Divine Man, the Lord, has now a heaven of angels, inmostly in each one of whom He dwells as in a little heaven and spiritual world. Into each angel he can flow with the fulness of His wisdom, and clothing it with a spiritual garment of angelic thought, descend into the ideas of speech of which nothing is lost. Thus the Lord as the Word, filling the person of an angel, may clothe and speak His wisdom in the language of human ideas; and then opening the spiritual senses of a man in the world, dictate His Word to be spoken or recorded in the language of the world. Thus is given the written Word through heaven, by means of prepared men, but as the work of God.
THE WRITTEN WORD.
The written Word is as Divine in its origin as are the things of nature. It is produced in the same way through heaven from the Lord. And thus produced the eternal mind dwells in it and operates by it, as it infills and works in the universe it has made. There is the same distinction between inspired Scripture and merely human ​composition as beween any living creation and its artificial imitation. There is the continual influx and presence of a Divine vital force into the language of the written "Word, analogous to the force of living things in nature; the indwelling, sustaining and operating presence of the eternal mind that creates it. And this is the meaning of that divine definition of revelation, "The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life." Swedenborg says:
"I have been informed how the Lord spoke with the prophets through whom the Word was given. He did not speak with them as with the ancients, by an influx into their interiors, but by spirits who were sent to them, whom the Lord filled with His presence and thus inspired words which they dictated to the prophets; so that it was not influx but dictation. And because the words came forth immediately from the Lord, they were each filled with the Divine, and contain within an internal sense, which is such that the angels of heaven perceive them in a heavenly and spiritual sense, when men perceive them in a natural sense; thus the Lord has conjoined heaven and the world by the Word."
In Revelation the Divine proceeding from ​God descends through the heavens even to man. Thus it descends through degrees celestial, spiritual, and natural; and when it has descended it contains these degrees in itself. The literal sense of holy Scripture is natural; its interior sense is spiritual; its inmost sense is celestial; and in each sense it is divine. These three senses of Holy Scripture make one by correspondence, like end, cause, and effect; therefore in the literal sense the Word is in its fulness, its holiness and its power. Every natural expression or image involves a corresponding internal sense. Thus it is a "ladder of light" with its foot on the earth and its top in heaven, upon which the angels of God ascend and descend, holding men and angels in open communion with the revealing Word who is over all and in all.
"There is conjunction with the Lord by means of the Word, because He is the Word, that is, the veritable Divine Truth and Good therein. The conjunction is effected by the literal sense, because the Word in that sense is in its fullness, its holiness and its power. That conjunction is not apparent to man, but it exists in love of truth, and in the perception of it. There is consociation with the angels of ​heaven by the literal sense, because within it there is a spiritual and a celestial sense; and in these senses the angels are,—the angels of the Lord's spiritual kingdom in the spiritual sense of the Word, and those of his celestial kingdom in its celestial sense. Both these senses are evolved from the natural sense while the man who regards the Word as holy, is reading it. The evolution is instantaneous; consequently the consociation is also."
"That the spiritual angels are in the spiritual sense of the Word, and the celestial angels in its celestial sense, has been manifested to me by much experience. The perception has been given me that when I read the Word in its literal sense communication with the heavens was effected, sometimes with one heavenly society and sometimes with another: what I understood according to the natural sense, spiritual angels understood according to the spiritual sense, and celestial angels according to the celestial sense, and this instantly. As I have perceived this communication some thousands of times, there remains with me not the least doubt about it. . . I have thus been taught by living experience, that the Word in its literal sense is the Divine medium of ​conjunction with the Lord and consociation with the angels of heaven."
THE INCARNATE WORD.
As the Word is always creating, producing new forms of use, and by perpetual influx into things made, sustaining and relating all things; so the Word is always revealing, giving new Scripture as it is needed, in continual adaptation to changing and unfolding needs of man, and, by perpetual influx into the things written, "opening in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." And in the development of this eternal nature and necessary endeavor of the Word, to recreate from sin, and save in life eternal, the "Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, (the glory of the Divine wisdom begotten of the Divine love,) full of grace and truth."
The Lord Jesus Christ is Jehovah God in His Divine Humanity; the Word, taking on the human spirit and body which He had made, that He might bring the Divine truth into vital and redeeming contact with the life of man, and impart to him power to be saved through the truth. Christ was not a second person in the Godhead, not a man ​like ourselves; but the Eternal Word who was with God and was God from the beginning, who made heaven and earth, inspired and kept them in being, who revealed Himself from the ancient times as the Divine Man, who put on the human form of an angel that He might be seen before the spiritual sight of patriarchs and prophets, now taking the nature of man upon himself by actual conception and birth into the world, and glorifying it by the actual life of the eternal Mind in it and upon it, to be forever more to men the very objective revelation of God, to be the visible object of their faith and worship, and the medium of the eternal life which is light to the souls of all men. It was miracle; but the same old miracle by which the eternal mind produces and dwells in the universe, produces a written Revelation and dwells in it, creates human minds and dwells with them, orders human history and testifies His eternal providence by it. It was only the indwelling mind of God, in its eternal purpose and meaning, coming out into realization and revelation. The humanity of Christ was conceived of the highest; so is every spirit of man through the father of him. This Divine conception immediate and ​independent of a human father, is no infringement and reversal of order; it is simply the old, eternal order, brought into relation to the developing needs of men. The Power of the Highest immediately overshadowing the virgin, the holy thing born of her is in very fact the only begotten Son of God. Divine within and human without. The Divine within is the Father, the human is the Son; they are one person as soul and body are one man. Thus the Word brings Redemption. In taking our nature through the virgin, He assumes the burdens of our heredity, the iniquities of us all are made to meet in Him; and our connection with Hell through our hereditary evils, He takes up into His own life. In His life on earth He brings the eternal Word in conquering conflict with the evils of the race; He is tempted in all points yet without sin; and "in that He hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted." The Divine Soul within Him acted by the human nature as the soul operates by the body; and as the soul conquers, regenerates and reconciles to itself the body, so God in Christ reconciles the world unto Himself, glorifies the human nature with the Divine, unites it to the ​Divine, as the very Human form of God in whom "dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." He is the Visible God; in Him is the Invisible; and from Him is the Holy Spirit of life, light and regenerating power. This is why His Spirit has power to draw unto Himself and quicken with Divine life, even those who know Him not as God, but draw all their consciousness of the eternal goodness from its revelation in Him.
Vindicating the Divine wisdom in the life of Jesus Christ, the spirit of His redemption combats and victories enters mightily into the written Word. He fulfilled it in Himself; and filled full its every word and commandment with the omnipotent virtue of His own Victory. In and by the Word, His Divine Human Spirit is mediated to every soul who will receive it as His Word, and keep it in faith in Him; yea, this is why the Scriptures have power with men, and give power to a church, which has lost the dogmatic faith of their inspiration; the Spirit of Christ, the Word, enters with them and quickens through them the mind that will yield itself to goodness, yea, and "of the rebellious also."
THE LAWS OF PROVIDENCE.
In concluding this general statement of doctrine, a summary statement of some of the laws of Divine Providence is offered.
1. It is a law of Divine Providence that man should be led and taught by the Lord from heaven, through the Word and doctrine from it, and thus to all appearance as by himself. He is led by influx according to the correspondence of his affections and thoughts with societies in the spiritual world; and he is taught by enlightenment according to his understanding of the Word and life in obedience to it. "The affections of man," we are taught, "from which his thoughts proceed, extend into the societies in the spiritual world in every direction, into more or fewer of them according to the extent and quality of his affection. Within these societies is man as to his spirit, attached to them as it were, with extended cords circumscribing the space in which he walks. As he proceeds from one affection to another, so he proceeds from one society to another, and the part of the society in which he is, is the centre from which issue his affections and thoughts to all the other societies as circumferences. Through these societies the ​man, that is, his mind, although bound, is led by the Lord; nor does he take a step into which and from which he is not so led."
"Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me." Yet in all this divine leading it is provided that man should not perceive but that he walks in perfect liberty. "If his affection is evil he is taken round through the societies of hell, and if he does not look to the Lord he is brought more inwardly and deeply into them; but still the Lord leads him as it were by the hand, permitting and withdrawing him so far as he is willing from freedom to follow. On the other hand, if he looks to the Lord he is successively led through these societies, by an order and connection known only to the Lord, and is brought by continuous degrees out of hell, upwards toward heaven, and into heaven. The Lord effects this without man's knowledge because if he knew of it he would disturb the continuity of that progress by leading himself." It is done while man looks to the Lord, learns truths from the Word, shuns evils revealed, and wills good and truth into life as of himself; but in all this he is aided by the most wonderful secret ministry, bending and ​guiding his affections as if he did it of himself.
2. So far as man shuns evils according to the truths of faith received from the Word, the Lord enters with His redeeming and saving Spirit, removes evils and conjoins man with heaven and with Himself.
If man believed, as is the truth, that all good and truth are from the Lord, and all evil and falsity from hell, he would not appropriate good to himself and claim merit, nor appropriate evil to himself and make himself guilty of it. He would only reflect upon the evils within him, and cast them back from himself to infernal spirits from whence they come, and this by shunning them as sins.
3. The internal cannot be cleansed from the lusts of evil so long as evils in the external man are not removed.
4. The evils in the external man cannot be removed except by means of the man; that is with his consent and effort as of himself.
5. Therefore evils are permitted that they may be seen, and that man may repent of and resist them.
6. So far as man shuns evils in the external thought and life, the Lord removes the ​internal desire and also the evil from the life.
7. Thus the Lord acts from His Divine in the inmost, and from His Divine truth in external and outmost things of man's life, with man's consent and co-operation, to heal, order and regenerate all intermediate things.
8. And since the Lord is order itself, all things from first to last are reformed and regenerated with respect to all other things for the sake of eternal life in heaven.
* ↑ Greater Origins and Issues of Life and Death, pp. 267 and 269.
* ↑ Intercourse of the soul and the body. Nos. 4-6.
* ↑ Divine love and wisdom. No. 165.
* ↑ Greater Origins and Issues of Life and Death, pp. 403, 404.
* ↑ Divine Love and Wisdom. N. 166.
* ↑ Heaven and Hell. N. 432, et seq.
* ↑ Human Body and its connection with Man; pp. 269-272.
* ↑ Manual of Doctrine, pp. 57-58.
* ↑ Greater origins and issues of Life and Death, pp. 41-42.
* ↑ Heaven and Hell, n. 87—102.
* ↑ Heaven and Hell, N. 112, 113.
* ↑ Arcana Cœlestia, n. 8364.
* ↑ Arcana Cœlestia, n. 5712, 5726.
* ↑ Arcana Cœlestia, N. 5377.
* ↑ Heaven and Hell n. 114.