January 27, 2016

A Man's Life 'Ordered' by God

Selection from (True Christian Religion - Additions) ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
1. Love introduces order immediately into the understanding, and by mediate things into the whole of the mind.

2. Man from his heaven rules his world, but under the Lord's auspices.


3. Man is successively introduced into order from his infancy, by means of his parents, companions, masters; he reacts and acts from himself, and thus imbues himself with order, and finally becomes order in the same proportion as he receives it and imbues himself with it.


4. Order is thus induced upon his state and the form of his life; and the laws of order are truths and statutes.


5. In proportion as man receives love, in the same proportion he makes for himself order, according to which, as said above, love introduces and forms order in him.


6. Man can get himself into a state of order in proportion as he gets himself into a state of love; thus he has the capability of becoming a genuine man; yet he has also the capability of becoming like the beasts of every kind.


7. True order is connected with decorum, beauty, elegance, perfection.


8. Man cannot become order from himself, except first mediately through other men, and afterwards immediately from the Lord; nor is it possible for man to introduce himself into order, and to form order in himself from himself: nor, finally, is it possible for the Lord to do so, unless man acts at the same time from himself.


9. Man cannot become a beast, but he can become as a beast.


10. The productions of love are called affections, and these constitute man's state; and its determinations through the understanding are called truths. These form man; and in proportion as the latter are produced from the former, man becomes order.

(True Christian Religion - Additions 3)