Selection from Invitation to the New Church ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Posthumous Work
The soul is the inmost man, and thence according to the ancients it is in the whole and in every part of the body, because the beginning of life resides in the soul; that part of the body in which the soul does not inmostly reside, does not live. Wherefore there is a reciprocal union; and hence the body acts from the soul, but not the soul through the body. Posthumous Work
Whatever proceeds from God partakes of the human form,this is especially the case with the soul, which is the first of man.
because God is Himself the Man
Nothing is more common in the whole heaven and in the whole world, than for one thing to be within another; thus there is an inmost, a middle, and an outmost; and these three intercommunicate, and the power of the middle and outmost are derived from the inmost.
That there are three things, one within the other, appears from each and all things in the human body.
• Around the brain there are three tunics, which are called the dura mater, the pia mater, and the arachnoid; and over these is the skull.
• Around the whole body there are tunics, one within the other, which taken all together are called the skin.
• Around each artery and vein there are three tunics; likewise around each muscle and fiber; in like manner around all the rest which are there.
In the vegetable kingdom the case is the same.
How these parts intercommunicate, and how the inmost enters the middle, and the middle the ultimate, is shown by anatomy, etc.
Thence it follows that the same is the case with light; that spiritual light which in its essence is truth, is interiorly in natural light; likewise that spiritual heat which in its essence is love, is in natural heat. By natural heat is meant natural love, because that love becomes warm; and this is clothed with the heat of the blood.
All things which people speak concerning the Holy Spirit fall to the ground, as soon as it is believed that man is not life, but only an organ of life; and thus that God is constantly in man, and that He strives, acts, and urges that those things which belong to religion, and consequently those which belong to the church, to heaven and salvation, shall be received. Therefore it is wrong to say that the Holy Spirit is given, or that it is lost. For the Holy Spirit is nothing else than the Divine which proceeds out of the Lord from the Father, and this Divine causes a man's life, and also his understanding and his love; and the presence of this Divine is perpetual. Without the presence of the Lord or the Holy Spirit, man would be nothing but a kind of beast; yea he would not have any more life, than salt, a stone, or a stock. The reason of this is, that man is not born with instinct, like a beast; wherefore a pullet one day old knows the order of its life better than an infant.
(from Invitation to the New Church 48-50)