Bringing the Natural Mind Back into Correspondent Form

Selection from Divine Love and Wisdom ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
GOD ALONE, CONSEQUENTLY THE LORD, IS LOVE ITSELF, BECAUSE HE IS LIFE ITSELF
AND ANGELS AND MEN ARE RECIPIENTS OF LIFE

The Lord, who is the God of the universe, is uncreate and infinite, whereas man and angel are created and finite. And because the Lord is uncreate and infinite, He is Being [Esse] itself, which is called "Jehovah," and Life itself, or Life in itself. From the uncreate, the infinite, Being itself and Life itself, no one can be created immediately, because the Divine is one and indivisible; but their creation must be out of things created and finited, and so formed that the Divine can be in them. Because men and angels are such, they are recipients of life. Consequently, if any man suffers himself to be so far misled as to think that he is not a recipient of life but is Life, he cannot be withheld from the thought that he is God. A man's feeling as if he were Life, and therefore believing himself to be so, arises from fallacy; for the principal cause is not perceived in the instrumental cause otherwise than as one with it. That the Lord is Life in Himself, He Himself teaches in John:

As the Father hath life in Himself, so also hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself (5:26)

He declares also that He is Life itself (John 11:25; 14:6).

Now since life and love are one, it follows that the Lord, because He is Life itself, is Love itself.

But that this may reach the understanding, it must needs be known positively that the Lord, because He is Love in its very essence, that is, Divine Love, appears before the angels in heaven as a sun, and that from that sun heat and light go forth; the heat which goes forth therefrom being in its essence love, and the light which goes forth therefrom being in its essence wisdom;

that so far as the angels are recipients of that spiritual heat and of that spiritual light, they are loves and wisdoms;

not loves and wisdoms from themselves, but from the Lord. That spiritual heat and that spiritual light not only flow into angels and affect them, but they also flow into men and affect them just to the extent that they become recipients;

and they become recipients in the measure of their love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor.

That sun itself, that is, the Divine Love, by its heat and its light, cannot create any one immediately from itself; for one so created would be Love in its essence, which Love is the Lord Himself; but it can create from substances and matters so formed as to be capable of receiving the very heat and the very light; comparatively as the sun of the world cannot by its heat and light produce germinations on the earth immediately, but only out of earthy matters in which it can be present by its heat and light, and cause vegetation. In the spiritual world the Divine Love of the Lord appears as a sun, and from it proceed the spiritual heat and the spiritual light from which the angels derive love and wisdom.

Since, then, man is not life, but is a recipient of life, it follows that the conception of a man from his father is not a conception of life, but only a conception of the first and purest form capable of receiving life; and to this, as to a nucleus or starting-point in the womb, are successively added substances and matters in forms adapted to the reception of life, in their order and degree.

~~~

Such things as have come to be of the love, and consequently of the life, are engendered in offspring.

It is known that man is born into evil, and that he derives it by inheritance from parents; though by some it is believed that he inherits it not from his parents, but through parents from Adam; this, however, is an error. He derives it from the father, from whom he has a soul that is clothed with a body in the mother. For the seed, which is from the father, is the first receptacle of Life, but such a receptacle as it was with the father;

for the seed is in the form of his love, and each one's love is, in things greatest and least, similar to itself;

and there is in the seed a conatus to the human form, and by successive steps it goes forth into that form.

From this it follows that evils called hereditary are from fathers, thus from grandfathers and great-grandfathers, successively transmitted to offspring.

This may be learned also from observation, for as regards affections, there is a resemblance of races to their first progenitor, and a stronger resemblance in families, and a still stronger resemblance in households; and this resemblance is such that generations are distinguishable not only by the disposition, but even by the face.

This ingeneration of the love of evil by parents in offspring — the correspondence of the mind, that is, of the will and understanding, with the body and its members and organs

Evils are derived from parents successively, and that they increase through the accumulations of one parent after another, until man by birth is nothing but evil; also that the malignity of evil increases according to the degree in which the spiritual mind is closed up, for in this manner the natural mind also is closed above; finally, that there is no recovery from this in posterity except through their fleeing from evils as sins by the help of the Lord. In this and in no other way is the spiritual mind opened, and by means of such opening the natural mind is brought back into correspondent form.

(from Divine Love and Wisdom 4-6; 269)