Enlightenment which Affects the Understanding

Selection from The Divine Providence ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

As few know anything about the enlightenment which affects the understanding of a man who is taught by the Lord, something will now be said about it. There is an interior and an exterior enlightenment from the Lord; and there is an interior and an exterior enlightenment from man. Interior enlightenment from the Lord consists in a man's perceiving at first hearing whether what is said is true or not true; and exterior enlightenment is derived from this in the thought. Interior enlightenment from man is from confirmation alone; and exterior enlightenment from man is from knowledge alone. Something will now be said about each of these.

• A rational man by interior enlightenment from the Lord at once perceives, when he hears them, whether many things are true or not; as, for example, that love is the life of faith, that is, that faith lives from love. By interior enlightenment a man also perceives that what a man loves he wills, and what he wills he does, and consequently that to love is to do; and again, that whatever a man believes from love, this he also wills and does, and consequently that to have faith is also to do; and also that an irreligious man cannot have love to God, and so cannot have faith in God. By interior enlightenment also a rational man perceives the following truths as soon as he hears them: that God is One; that He is omnipresent; that all good is from Him; also that all things have relation to good and truth; and that all good is from Good itself and all truth from Truth itself. These and other similar truths a man perceives interiorly within himself when he hears them; and he has this perception because he has rationality, and this in the light of heaven is what enlightens.

• Exterior enlightenment is enlightenment of thought derived from this interior enlightenment; and thought is in this enlightenment so far as it remains in the perception that it has from interior enlightenment and also so far as it has knowledges of truth and good, for from these it draws reasons for confirmation. Thought from this exterior enlightenment sees a matter on both sides; on the one it sees reasons which confirm it, and on the other appearances which invalidate it; the latter it dispels and the former it stores up.

• Interior enlightenment from man, however, is wholly different. By it a man sees a matter on one side and not on the other; and when he has confirmed it he sees it in a light similar in appearance to the light treated of above, but it is the light of winter. For example, a judge who judges unjustly because of bribes and for the sake of gain, when he has confirmed his decision by the laws and by reasons, sees in his judgment nothing but what is just. Some, indeed, see the injustice, but as they do not wish to see it, they darken the issue and blind themselves, and so do not see it. It is the same in the case of a judge whose decisions are influenced by friendship, by the desire to gain favour, and by the ties of relationship.

In similar fashion such persons treat everything that they receive from the mouth of a man in authority or a man of celebrity, or that they have hatched out from their own intelligence. They are blind reasoners; for their sight is from falsities, which they confirm; and falsity closes the sight, while truth opens it. Such persons do not see any truth from the light of truth, or any justice from a love of what is just, but only from the light of confirmation, which is a delusive light. In the spiritual world these appear like faces with no head, or like faces that resemble human faces with heads of wood behind them; and they are called rational animals, because their rationality is merely potential. Exterior enlightenment from man is possessed by those who think and speak from mere knowledge impressed upon the memory; and these have but little ability to confirm anything from themselves.

(The Divine Providence 168)

The Opposite of Two Kinds of Pleasures

From Divine Providence ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

No one who is in the pleasures of the lusts of evil can know anything about the pleasures of affections for good in which the angelic heaven is; for these two kinds of pleasure are directly opposite to each other in internals, and therefore interiorly are opposite in externals; although they differ little on the mere surface. For every love has its own pleasures, even the love of evil in those who are in lusts, such as the love of committing adultery, taking revenge, defrauding, stealing, doing cruel deeds, and in the most wicked even the love of blaspheming the holy things of the church, and of chattering venomously against God. The love of ruling from love of self is the fountain head of these pleasures. They are from the lusts that beset the interiors of the mind; and from the interiors they flow down into the body, and there excite the unclean things that titillate the fibers; and thus bodily pleasure springs from the mind's pleasure in accord with the lusts.

What kinds of unclean things there are that titillate the bodily fibers of such persons it is granted to every one after death to know in the spiritual world. They are in general cadaverous, excrementitious, stercoraceous [consisting of or resembling dung or feces], reeking, and urinous things, for the hells of such abound in these unclean things. ... But after they have entered hell these filthy pleasures are turned into direful things. All this has been said that it may be understood what the happiness of heaven is, and the nature of it, .... For every thing is known from its opposite.

(Divine Providence 38)

When the Worship of Self Succeeds

From Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

... That they hear not a man the lip of his fellow. That this signifies that all are at variance, or that the one is against the other, is evident from the words themselves. "Not to hear one another's lip," is not to acknowledge what another says, and in the internal sense not to acknowledge what another teaches, that is, his doctrine, for "lip" is doctrine .... They acknowledge it indeed with the mouth, but not with the heart; but agreement with the mouth is nothing when there is disagreement of the heart.

The case in this respect is the same as it is with evil spirits in the other life, who, in like manner as the good, are distinguished into societies, but are kept conjoined together by being attached by the like phantasies and cupidities, so that they act as a one in persecuting truths and goods. Thus there is a certain common interest by which they are held together; but as soon as this common bond is dissolved, they rush one upon another, and then their delight consists in tormenting their associate or associates.

The case is similar with such doctrine and worship in this world; those in it acknowledge what pertains to doctrine and ritual harmoniously enough; but the common interest that holds them together is the worship of self; and so far as they can share in this common interest, they acknowledge; but so far as they cannot share or hope to share in it, they are disunited; for the reason given just above, that no one of this character possesses any truth, but everyone has falsity in the place of truth, and evil in the place of good.

(Arcana Coelestia 1322)