The Divine Man Made Comprehensible

Excerpt from Arcana Cœlestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

"the celestial of the spiritual," ... is meant the Lord; the same may also be said abstractedly of Him, because He [the Lord] is the celestial itself and the spiritual itself, that is, good itself and truth itself.

As regards man, these cannot indeed be conceived of abstractedly from person, because what is natural is adjoined to everything of his thought; nevertheless, when we consider that everything in the Lord is Divine, and that the Divine is above all thought, and altogether incomprehensible even to the angels, consequently if we then abstract that which is comprehensible, there remains being and coming-forth itself, which is the celestial itself and the spiritual itself, that is, good itself and truth itself.

Nevertheless, as man is such that he can have no idea of thought whatever about abstract things unless he adjoins something natural which has entered from the world through the senses (for without some such natural thing his thought perishes as in an abyss and is dissipated), therefore lest what is Divine should perish in man when he is wholly immersed in bodily and earthly things, and with whomsoever it remained it should be defiled by an unclean idea, and together with what is Divine everything celestial and spiritual thence derived should also perish, it pleased Jehovah to present Himself such as He actually is, and such as He appears in heaven, namely, as a Divine Man. For everything of heaven conspires to the human form, as may be seen from what has been shown at the end of the chapters [in the works: Arcana Cœlestia] concerning the correspondence of all things of man with the Grand Man, which is heaven. This Divine, or this of Jehovah in heaven, is the Lord from eternity. The same the Lord took also upon Him when He glorified or made Divine the human in Himself, as is very evident from the form in which He appeared before Peter, James, and John, when He was transfigured —

And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.  (Matt. 17:1, 2)

and also in which He at times appeared to the prophets. It is from this that everyone is able to think of the Divine Itself as of a Man, and at the same time of the Lord, in whom is all the Divine, and a perfect Trinity, for in the Lord the Divine Itself is the Father, this Divine in heaven is the Son, and the Divine thence proceeding is the Holy Spirit. That these are a one, as He Himself teaches, is hence manifest.

(from Arcana Cœlestia 5110:2,3)

Becoming Rational to the Third Degree

Selection from Heaven and Hell ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

How the rational faculty may be cultivated shall also be told in a few words. The genuine rational faculty consists of truths and not of falsities; whatever consists of falsities is not rational.

There are three kinds of truths, civil, moral, and spiritual.

• Civil truths relate to matters of judgment and of government in kingdoms, and in general to what is just and equitable in them.
• Moral truths pertain to the matters of everyone's life which have regard to companionships and social relations, in general to what is honest and right, and in particular to virtues of every kind.
• Spiritual truths relate to matters of heaven and of the church, and in general to the good of love and the truth of faith.

In every man there are three degrees of life.

The rational faculty is opened to the first degree by civil truths, to the second degree by moral truths, and to the third degree by spiritual truths. But it must be understood that the rational faculty that consists of these truths is not formed and opened by man's knowing them, but by his living according to them; and living according to them means loving them from spiritual affection

to love truths from spiritual affection is to love what is just and equitable because it is just and equitable, what is honest and right because it is honest and right, and what is good and true because it is good and true — while living according to them and loving them from the bodily affection is loving them for the sake of self and for the sake of one's reputation, honor or gain.

Consequently, so far as man loves these truths from a bodily affection he fails to become rational, for he loves, not them, but himself; and the truths are made to serve him as servants serve their Lord; and when truths become servants they do not enter the man and open any degree of life in him, not even the first, but merely rest in the memory as knowledges under a material form, and there conjoin themselves with the love of self, which is a bodily love.

All this shows how man becomes rational, namely, that he becomes rational to the third degree by a spiritual love of the good and truth which pertain to heaven and the church; he becomes rational to the second degree by a love of what is honest and right; and to the first degree by a love of what is just and equitable. These two latter loves also become spiritual from a spiritual love of good and truth, because that love flows into them and conjoins itself to them and forms in them as it were its own semblance.

(Heaven and Hell 468)

With Interest Looking

Selections from Arcana Cœlestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

What a man knows and understands to be so, he calls truth; and what he does from will, thus what he wills, he calls good. These two faculties [will and understanding] should constitute a one.

This may be illustrated by comparison with the sight of the eye, and with the pleasantness and delight that are experienced by means of this sight. When the eye sees objects, it experiences a pleasantness and delight from them in accordance with their forms, colors, and their consequent beauties both in general and in their parts; in a word, in accordance with the order or dispositions into series. This pleasantness and delight are not of the eye, but of the animus and its affection; and insofar as the man is affected with them, so far he sees them and retains them in memory, while the things that the eye sees from no affection, are passed over and are not implanted in the memory, thus are not conjoined with it.

From this it is evident that the objects of the external sight are implanted in accordance with the pleasantness and delight of the affections; and that they are in this pleasantness and delight; for when a similar pleasantness or delight recurs, such objects also recur; and in like manner when similar objects recur, such pleasantness and delight also recur, with variety according to the states. It is the same with the understanding, which is the internal sight - its objects are spiritual, and are called truths; the field of these objects is the memory; the pleasantness and delight of this sight is good; and thus good is that in which truths are inseminated and implanted....
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The man who is born within the church, from earliest childhood learns from the Word and from the doctrinal things of the church what the truth of faith is, and also what the good of charity is. But when he grows up to manhood he begins either to confirm or to deny in himself the truths of faith that he has learned

for he then looks at these truths with his own sight, and thereby causes them either to be made his own or else to be rejected

for nothing can become one's own that is not acknowledged of one's own insight, that is, which the man does not know to be so from himself, and not from somebody else; and therefore the truths learned from childhood enter no further into the man's life than the first entrance, from which they can either be admitted more interiorly, or else be cast out.

(from Arcana Cœlestia 4301:3,4; also no. 5376:1)