Where the 'Erroneous Belief' Came of Man Being a Divine Spark of God

From Conjugial Love ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

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What is meant by "the tree of life," what by "the tree of knowledge of good and evil," and what by "eating" of them?
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A tree signifies man; and its fruit signifies the good of life. By the tree of life, therefore, is meant man living from God, or God living in man. And as love and wisdom, and charity and faith, or good and truth, make the life of God in man, these are meant by the tree of life, and from these man has life eternal. The like is signified by the tree of life of which it is given to eat, in Revelation 2:7:-  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

And Revelation 22:2 & 14:-  In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.  Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

By the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is signified the man who believes that he lives of himself, and not from God; thus, that love and wisdom, charity and faith, that is, good and truth, are in man, his own, and not of God, believing this, because he thinks and wills, and speaks and acts in all similitude and appearance as if from himself. And because from this belief man persuades himself that God has imparted Himself or infused His Divine into him, therefore the serpent said:- God doth know that in the day that ye eat of the fruit of that tree your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5).

By eating of those trees is signified reception and appropriation; by eating of the tree of life, the reception of life eternal; and by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the reception of condemnation, and therefore also both Adam and his wife, together with the serpent, were accursed.

By the serpent is meant the devil as to the love of self and the pride of one's own intelligence. This love is the possessor of that tree; and men who are in pride from this love are such trees. They therefore are in a monstrous error who believe that Adam was wise and did good from himself, and that this was his state of integrity; when in fact Adam was himself accursed on account of that belief, for this is signified by his eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore he then fell from the state of integrity, in which he was by virtue of believing that he was wise and did good from God, and not at all from himself; for this is meant by eating of the tree of life.

The Lord alone when He was in the world was wise of Himself and did good from Himself; because the Divine Itself was in Him and was His by nativity. And therefore also by His own power He became the Redeemer and Saviour.

From all that had been said they formed this conclusion: That by the tree of life, and by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and by eating of them, is signified that life with man is God in him; and that then it is heaven to him and eternal life. And that death to man is the persuasion and belief that the life he has is not God, but himself; from which belief comes hell to him and eternal death, which is damnation.

(Conjugial Love 135)

The Nature of Influx - Good or Evil

From the work Heaven and Hell ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Divine influx is unceasing, and in the good is received in good, but not in the evil; for in them it is either rejected or suffocated or perverted; and in consequence they have an evil life which in a spiritual sense is death.

The spirits who are with man, both those conjoined with heaven and those conjoined with hell, never flow into man from their own memory and its thought, for if they should flow in from their own thought, whatever belonged to them would seem to man to be his. ... Nevertheless there flows into man through them out of heaven an affection belonging to the love of good and truth, and out of hell an affection belonging to the love of evil and falsity. Therefore as far as man's affection agrees with the affection that flows in, so far that affection is received by him in his thought, since man's interior thought is wholly in accord with his affection or love; but so far as man's affection does not agree with that affection it is not received.

Evidently, then, since thought is not introduced into man through spirits, but only an affection for good and an affection for evil, man has choice, because he has freedom; and is thus able by his thought to receive good and reject evil, since he knows from the Word what is good and what is evil. Moreover, whatever he receives by thought from affection is appropriated to him; but whatever he does not receive by thought from affection is not appropriated to him. All this makes evident the nature of the influx of good out of heaven with man, and the nature of the influx of evil out of hell.

(Heaven and Hell 297 - 298)

Perception and Reception - Intelligence and Wisdom

From Apocalypse Explained ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

... all intelligence and wisdom are from Divine truths according to the perception of them and their reception in the life.

To see truths, and to see what they are, is of perception; and to live according to them is of reception; and according to perception and reception there is intelligence and wisdom.

Intelligence and wisdom which are not from Divine truths, but from worldly things only, are not intelligence and wisdom but merely knowledge [scientia] and thence a faculty to reason; for intelligence is seeing inwardly in oneself whether a thing be true or not; but they who are wise from worldly things only do not see truths inwardly in themselves, but from others; and to see from others is merely to know [scire]; and such things come no farther under the mind's vision than that they may be confirmed. In such a state are most persons at this day within the church who make faith alone, separate from life, to be saving; consequently truths do not enter into their spirit, but merely into the memory of the natural man; and yet the light of heaven, which is Divine truth, can enter by no other way with man than by the way of his spirit, which is also the way of his soul; and man's spirit is such as his life is, but not such as his memory apart from his life is; and the light of heaven enters into man's spirit when he is in the good of love and of charity from the Lord, and when he is in that good he is also in faith.

(Apocalypse Explained 198)