Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
All the external rites of the church were signs of the covenant and were to be sacredly observed because internal things were signified by them . . . The internal things are what belong to the covenant because they are effective of conjunction, and the external things are not so except by means of the internal ones. The external things were merely signs of the covenant, or tokens of the conjunction, by means of which they might call to mind the internal things and thereby be conjoined by means of these.
All the internal things that belong to the
covenant, or that are effective of conjunction, relate to love and charity, and
proceed from love and charity; for on these two things, namely, loving God more
than one's self, and loving the neighbor as one's self, "hang all the law and
the prophets," that is, the universal doctrine of faith -
Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matt. 22:34-39; Mark 12:28-35).
There are two so-called loves and their cupidities that obstruct the influx of
heavenly love from the Lord; for when these loves reign in the interior and in
the external man, and take possession thereof, they either reject or suffocate,
and also pervert and contaminate, the inflowing heavenly love; for they are
utterly contrary to heavenly love.
But insofar as these loves are removed, so far the heavenly love flowing in from
the Lord begins to appear, nay, to give light in the interior man; and so far he
begins to see that he is in evil and falsity; next that he is actually in
uncleanness and filthiness; and finally that this has been his Own. They who are
becoming regenerate are those with whom these loves are being removed.
Observation of this removal is possible also with the unregenerate, for when the cupidities of these loves are quiescent in them, as sometimes occurs when they are in holy meditation, or when the cupidities are lulled, as happens when they are in misfortunes, in sicknesses, and diseases, and especially at the moment of death, then, because bodily and worldly things are lulled and as it were dead, they observe something of heavenly light and the consequent comfort. But with these persons there is not removal of the cupidities in question, but only a lulling of them, for when they return into their former state, they at once relapse into the same cupidities.
With the evil also, bodily and worldly
things can be lulled, and they can then be as it were uplifted into a kind of
heavenliness, as sometimes takes place with souls in the other life, especially
those newly arrived, who intensely desire to see the glory of the Lord, because
they had heard so much about heaven while they lived in the world. The external
things above referred to are then lulled in them, and in this way they are
carried into the first heaven and enjoy their desire. But they cannot remain
long, because there is only a quiescence of the bodily and worldly things, and
not a removal of them, as with the angels.
Be it known that heavenly love is continually inflowing into man from the Lord,
and that nothing else obstructs and impedes it, and causes its reception by the
man impossible, except the cupidities of those loves and the falsities derived from them.
(from Arcana Coelestia 2037-2041)