You are not who you take yourself to be…
Whoever you think you are, you can be sure of one thing – you are not that…

There are teachings that are difficult to accept, if not intellectually, certainly it’s the case practically. In the Gospel of John we have such a teaching given by the Lord where He describes Himself as the Bread of Heaven. Here’s the account…

35 And° Jesus said to them, I am the Bread of Life; he who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you also have seen Me, and do not believe…
41 The Jews then murmured at Him, because He said, I am the Bread which came down from heaven. 42 And they said, Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then He says, I came down from heaven?

43 Then Jesus answered and said to them, Murmur not among yourselves. 44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draw him; and I will raise him again at the last day…
53 Then Jesus said to them, Amen, amen, I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him again at the last day. 55 For My flesh is truly food, and My blood is truly drink. 56 He who eats My flesh, and drinks My blood, remains in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father has sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live by Me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers ate manna and died, he who eats of this bread shall live forever.

59 These things said He in the synagogue, teaching in Capernaum.
60 Many therefore of His disciples, when they had heard, said, This word is hard; who can hear it?
61 But° Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples murmur at it, said to them, Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you behold the Son of Man ascending up where He was before? 63 It is the spirit that makes alive; the flesh profits nothing; the words° which I speak to you are spirit, and are life. 64 But there are some of you who believe not.
66 From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him. (John :6)

In general what this is saying is that spiritual or eternal life is only possible through ingesting the goods and truths of the Word which is the Bread of Life or the Lord’s flesh and blood. The Lord’s flesh and blood is another way of saying the Lord’s proprium. This stands in contrast to the infernal proprium of a human being which, the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity state, is nothing but evil and falsity. So in these verses from John’s Gospel we are taught that if we are to enter into the life of heaven we must derive our sense of self from the Word which, is the Divine Human, or another way of saying that is that we are saved when we live from the Lord’s proprium and lost when we live from the infernal human proprium.

Does this cause you offence, I wonder? Probably not intellectually, if taken simply as a statement of doctrine. I don’t think any of us would argue with the idea that we need to draw our sense of the self from the Word and not from what is evil and false. In the context of the Gospel narrative the stumbling block for those in the story is due to taking the statement of eating the flesh and blood of the Lord literally. We can see why that might give cause for offence. On face value it’s a hard statement. But of course nothing in this story is to be taken literally for all teaching in the Word addresses spiritual or psychological realities. This particular Gospel narrative addresses the nature of the sense of self and what sustains it; the term for this in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity is “proprium.”

The question of what nourishes the human sense of self as a psychological reality is also addressed in the second chapter of the book of Genesis. There we find things described in the form of a mythic-poetic narrative that sees the newly formed human placed in a garden paradise. What we are told is that in the midst of that garden are two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Jehovah- Elohim tells the human that it is permissible to eat from all the trees of the garden with the exception of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for, to eat of this tree, will result in the death of what is human through its separation from the source of its life, Life Itself.

This simple narrative holds profound psycho-spiritual truths within it that addresses those essential fundamental elements that provide insight into human existence. The term Jehovah-Elohim refers to the source of life Itself. The Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom which, enters into the very soul of the human mind. Its reception in the soul comes forth as “the breath of lives” that raises the human from “the dust of ground,” animating every affection of the will and through that every thought of the understanding faculty, bringing it into a state of where its delights are perceived and experienced in the perception of every good and truth. It is a paradisal state called a garden which is given to the human to cultivate and tend. While the inflow of life into the soul is above conscious awareness its effects at the level of conscious awareness are experienced in the perception of heavenly delights, a state of garden- consciousness represented by the garden of Eden.

The narrative describes the origin and purpose of what it is to be human. The form of the soul is human being the image and like of the Divine Human that brings it into being. The human soul is the archetypal human-form receptive of the Divine Human, also called Jehovah-Elohim, who works through this archetypal image and likeness in a constant effort to maintain the integrity of the human form throughout the whole mind. The human mind is multi-leveled consisting of discrete degrees or planes, often referred to as inmost, internal, and external. The external level, also called the natural, is made up of a rational, sensual, and corporeal or bodily plane. Conscious awareness for a human being is located on the most external level of the mind. The Hebrew word for garden (גן (gan)) here carries the meaning of a bounded area protected by a wall. This represents the limits circumscribed for the development of a genuine human being. The task that gives every human being meaning is stated; it is to work to cultivate the mind-garden and to protect what is being cultivated. To cultivate what is good and true is to engage the will in what is good while, to protect is to engage the truths of the understanding faculty to watch over the gift of life provided by the Lord. To consciously work to cultivate what is good and true in one’s life and to protect this is the sacred life-task given to all who are becoming human. It is what it means to live a spiritual life which means, to be lived by life which instills a deep sense of purpose and meaning. At the core of this sacred responsibility is the lived acknowledgement that all that all the delights of life such a state holds does NOT belong to the human but is an effect of the Lord’s inflowing presence with it (Arcana Coelestia 122)

This responsibility given to the human, to at-tend to the quality of its conscious life flows into its awareness where it presents as something instinctive. This is because it is something inherent in the flow of life entering the human soul from the Jehovah- Elohim. All the Divine Love and Wisdom seeks is the happiness of those it creates and that happiness requires that the human attend to what’s needed for the cultivation of the garden of conscious life.

The Sacred Scripture states that;

“Jehovah-Elohim commanded the human, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that though eatest thereof dying thou shalt die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

This statement is not what a literal reading of it suggests; God having a person to person conversation with a human being. What it captures is the archetypal essence of human life, or what is at the core of what it means to be truly human – where by human is meant a state of spiritual consciousness that is completely aligned with the purpose and meaning of its existence as determined by the Lord. The statement captures in a single sentence the core values and principles that govern what is truly human. To go against this would mean to go against the very essence of life, hence the final phrase, “dying thou shalt die.”

This statement isn’t a threat of punishment but an internal dictate woven into the fabric of garden-consciousness, an inherent knowing in one’s very soul that arises out of the reception of life flowing in through the human soul from Jehovah-Elohim. The infantile notion that it describes God operating like some strict parent laying down the law isn’t helpful in understanding what’s going on here. The statement describes the form the influx of life takes in that human state of mind described here. This can be seen in a comment on this verse in the Arcana Coelestia 125 which says that the human;

…had from the Lord (inflowing life) continual perception, so that when they reflected on what was treasured up in the memory they instantly perceived whether it was true and good, insomuch that when anything false presented itself, they not only avoided it but even regarded it with horror: such also is the state of the angels.

The integrity of the human form requires that the will faculty functions from what is good and the understanding faculty functions from what is true. Any departure from this leads to a disruption of the integrity of the human form and a diminishment of its spiritual capacities which brings us now to the two trees in the midst of the garden.

THE TWO TREES by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit

Have dowered the stars with merry light; The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head

Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee. There the Loves a circle go,

The flaming circle of our days, Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways; Remembering all that shaken hair And how the winged sandals dart, Thine eyes grow full of tender care: Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.

Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves. For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old. There, through the broken branches, go The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,

Or else they stand and sniff the wind, And shake their ragged wings; alas! Thy tender eyes grow all unkind: Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

The Divine life flows in by an inward way seeking reception on the conscious plane of the human mind. Its reception requires the human to take responsibility for its sacred life-task, that of cultivating and protecting the life it is given, for in this life-task is the source of all purpose and meaning. The sense of self that accompanies this human form of mind, while definitely conscious, is so without being self-conscious. It is a consciousness whose life is grounded in a deep sense that the Lord alone IS. This state of humanness is almost impossible to describe from the level of consciousness we are immersed in, a state that is almost entirely self-conscious. But it can be a useful thing to meditate on if only to get a sense of how far we are from what it is to be truly human. It may be that we get a glimpse of just how dead we are spiritually in relation to the state of humanness described here in the book of Genesis. The closest experience most people can connect with that provides a sense of this garden-like- consciousness, are in those moments when they are so engaged in some useful activity, for the benefit of others, that they forget themselves so that their sense of self becomes one with the activity itself. for as long as this state is active our sense of self has merged to become one with the use, you could say we have become the use itself.

…all the angels are forms of charity (or uses), the beauty of which is from the truths which are of faith, and the life of this beauty is from the good which is of charity.(Arcana Coelestia 5133)

All things in the heavens are organized in accordance with Divine order, which is everywhere guarded by the services performed by angels, those things that pertain to the general good or use by the wiser angels, those that pertain to particular uses by the less wise, and so on. They are subordinated just as uses are subordinated in the Divine order; and for this reason a dignity is connected with every function according to the dignity of the use. Nevertheless, an angel does not claim dignity to himself, but ascribes all dignity to the use; and as the use is the good that he accomplishes, and all good is from the Lord, so he ascribes all to the Lord. Therefore he who thinks of honour for himself and subsequently for the use, and not for the use and thereby for himself, can perform no duty in heaven, because this is looking away backwards from the Lord, and regarding self in the first place and use in the second. When use is spoken of the Lordalso is meant, because, as has just been said, use is good, and good is from the Lord. (Heaven and Hell 389)

While it is the continuous inflow of life that animates the human so that it becomes a conscious living soul, it is conscious within the bounds of what’s described as a walled-garden. We’ve already touched on the idea that the Hebrew word for garden carries the meaning of a protected space. This protective space is a psychological structure that allows for the appearance of life to arise in another being so that it can have the experience of being conscious. The wall implied in the Hebrew word for garden represents what protects and maintains this apparent separate consciousness through preventing the inflow of life from Jehovah-Elohim overwhelming the human to the point where it would lose all sense of being a conscious being. The walled- garden makes human consciousness possible through protecting it so that the inflowing life isn’t experienced directly as coming from a source outside that state of garden-consciousness. This creates the necessary conditions by which the Divine Love and Wisdom can bring into being a conscious being other than Itself that has freedom in spiritual matters allowing for a reciprocal relationship without which love can’t exist. By definition for love to exist it can’t be coerced; to force another to love is not love but a form of slavery because there is no freedom or possibility for a reciprocal exchange in such a state.

Hopefully, we can now see that within this state of garden-consciousness there exists the potential for doubting the nature of reality. The human feels life as something arising from within itself, this is an unavoidable if human consciousness is to exist, yet perceives, while it is in the order of its life, that this feeling is an appearance. The order of human life is to acknowledge the Lord as the source of all that is, to cultivate what is good and true and to watch and protect the state of garden-consciousness from those things that enter into it, that call those purer perceptions of the nature of reality into question. While the human is in this state of order it lives from the Lord, it lives from and is sustained by those purer perceptions flowing into its conscious awareness.

The eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents the awakening of self-consciousness which is devastating to garden-consciousness as it results in the loss of all spiritual intelligence and wisdom. The dialogue with the serpent in that narrative represents a strengthening inclination toward accepting as valid those thoughts entering the state of garden-consciousness that suggest to the human that the feeling that it is the source of its life is actually true. The leaving behind of garden-consciousness and the shift toward self-consciousness is subtle. The serpent represents reasoning from the senses and is described as being more subtle than any other beast of the field. This shift sees a move into a affection for knowledge about spiritual and divine realities but no acknowledging of them as something to live from. The result of this is that it gives birth to all manner of rationalisations that uses spiritual knowledge to justify its belief in this emerging reconstituted sense of reality in which, the delusion arising from the false belief in itself as an autonomous independent being can be maintained. We see then, that states of self-consciousness leads to the discarding of the sacred responsibility of the core life-task that makes a human human. In this diminished state the human can no longer be called a human for it is no longer in the image and likeness of its creator. States of self-consciousness not only eat away at this image and likeness but robs humanity of all that gives it its sense of purpose and meaning as spiritual beings.

What’s at play in the rise of self-consciousness is the denial of the fundamental truth that underpins human existence, that the Lord alone has proprium, that all life flows in, and that to be human is to be in the lived acknowledgement of this. Where this is lacking what arises is a form of consciousness that is organised around their opposites or what is evil and false.

Man’s proprium when viewed from heaven looks just like something bony, lifeless, and utterly misshapen, and so in itself something dead. But once it has received life from the Lord it appears as something having flesh. For man’s proprium is something altogether dead, though it has the appearance to him of being something; indeed it appears to be everything. Whatever is living within him comes from the Lord’s life; and if this were to leave him, he would fall down dead as a stone. For he is purely an organ of life, though the nature of the organ determines that of the life-affection. The Lord alone possesses Proprium. By His Proprium He has redeemed man and by His Proprium saves him. The Lord’s Proprium is Life, and from His Proprium man’s proprium, which in itself is dead, is given life. The Lord’s Proprium was also meant by His words in Luke,

A spirit does not have flesh and bones as ye see Me have. Luke 24:39-40. (Arcana Coelestia 149{2})

In order to be self-consciousness there must first be a “self” that one can be conscious of. But we have seen that there is in reality no such self, that it is an illusion based in the appearances of the senses. Our love for our self is such a integral part of our identity that it is allowed to remain intact in the hope that a true human in the image and likeness of God might be raised up as a testimony to the mercy and love of the Lord.

I just want to circle back now to the beginning where we touched on the hard sayings the Lord and His rejection by those who found what He said offensive. You remember that it had to do with salvation being dependent on eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Make no mistake, this idea is offensive to the human proprium. It’s offensive, not just in terms of its literal meaning, but it is even more offensive and, I would suggest, even more intensely resisted in its spiritual meaning by anyone who happens upon the smallest whiff of its implications for the state of self- consciousness. By His flesh and blood the Word means the Lord’s Proprium and it is by this He has redeemed what is human and by it man is saved. So by means of this Divine Proprium the way is opened for salvation, the opening of the way being redemption, and if that way is entered upon then salvation or the regeneration of the mind can be effected. We might ask at this point, saved from what? Well if we turn to the work the Arcana Coelestia paragraph 210, we are given a clear picture of what it is we need saving from.

What is the proprium? The human proprium consists of everything evil and false that gushes out of self-love and love of the world. It involves people believing not in the Lord or in the Word but in themselves, and their imagining that what they do not grasp through sensory evidence or through facts does not exist at all. They become as a consequence nothing but evil and falsity and so have a warped view of everything. Things that are evil they see as good, and those that are good as evil; things that are false they see as true, and those that are true as false. Realities they imagine to be nothing, and things that are nothing they imagine to be everything. They call hatred love, thick darkness light, death life, and vice versa. In the Word such people are called ‘the lame and the blind’. This then is the human proprium which in itself is hellish and condemned. (Arcana Coelestia 210)

THE SECOND COMING by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

There are many, many passages in the Heavenly Doctrine that reiterate the teaching that the human proprium is nothing but evil and falsity, that the human proprium is what is meant by hell. This human proprium is self-consciousness which is a “belief in oneself” in contrast to a belief in the Word/Lord. While that belief reigns, everything is warped, evil is seen as good, good is seen as evil, truth is seen as false and the false is held to be true. Realities, like there is but One Self and that is the Lord, are held to be nothing while nothing, such as the delusion of being a self, is held to be everything. If this teaching regarding the quality of the human proprium causes offence, it maybe because we don’t see that self-love or a love for the delusion of being an independent autonomous self is destructive of all genuine spiritual life. And where it doesn’t cause offence it may just be that the delusion is so strongly defended and clothed in religio-spiritual thought that nothing of the nature of the infernal nature of this self comes into view.

What the Lord’s Proprium saves us from is our belief in our self. We are being saved from self-consciousness. It is a fallacy that the Lord is saving the us the self we take our self to be. This, as we have just seen, is nothing but evil and falsity. Hell cannot be transformed into heaven. Salvation means that this self has to die before what is genuinely human is to be reborn. And it can only die if we are willing let go of the delights associated with this life through eating His flesh and His blood.

…the Lord’s “flesh” denotes the Divine good of His Divine love; and that His “blood” denotes the Divine truth proceeding from His Divine good; can be seen from the fact that these are what nourish the spiritual life of a man. From this also it is said, “My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed;” and also, “this is the bread that came down from heaven.” And as man is conjoined with the Lord through love and faith, it is also said, “he that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me, and I in him.”(Arcana Coelestia 9127)

The Lord’s Proprium is the Divine good of His Divine love and this good is made available through the Divine truth proceeding from His Divine good. I think we can see what is presented here in this number as the Lord’s Proprium is the Word which is also what is meant by the Lord’s Divine Human. It is the Word that saves us from the self-concept that holds to the belief that we are an independent autonomous self.

The Word nourishes and regenerates the human mind and brings it back to the image and likeness of God. But it only does this if we are willing to engage with it with a view to applying its truths to cultivate what is good and true through at- tending to the quality of what is flowing in. The Word sets out what is required of us, the sacred life-task which is our spiritual worship and at the same time empowers us to live from it as if of our selves. When this as-of-self state rules the mind the feeling of self is returned to being held as an appearance and the way to the tree of life, the Word is opened to the Divine Life within.

I would like us to focus today on the image of Jacob’s ladder which can be found in Genesis 28:10-12. There we find Jacob travelling to Laban’s house to find a wife. Laban is Jacob’s uncle on his mother’s side. The back story is interesting in that he was sent there by his father Isaac, who was persuaded by Rebecka, his wife and the mother of Jacob, that it would be better for Jacob to marry one of their own rather than to marry a Canaanite from the surrounding district. However, there was a more pressing reason to get Jacob away from the family home which had to do with the fact that Rebecka and Jacob were complicit in deceiving Isaac so that he would bestow on Jacob the birthright belonging to his older twin brother Esau. Now, Rebecka, aware of Esau’s anger toward his brother, feared for Jacob’s life so she worked on Isaac and persuaded him to send Jacob to Laban to acquire a wife for himself.

And so, we come to the point in the story where Jacob takes rest for the night on his way to Laban and we are told that Jacob dreams a dream, so reading Genesis 28:10-12 we have…

And forth is Jacob faring from Beer-sheba, and going toward Charan. And coming is he upon a place and is lodging there, for the sun has set. And taking is he one of the stones of the place, and is placing it for his pillow, and lying down is he in that place. And dreaming is he, and behold! A ladder-way set up earthward, with its head touching the heavens. And behold! Angels of God are ascending and descending on it.

We also come across a reference to this ladder upon which the angels of God are ascending and descending in the Gospel of John where Jesus has the following exchange with Nathanael…

Jesus perceived Nathanael coming toward Him, and is saying concerning him, “Lo! truly an Israelite in whom there is no guile!” Nathanael is saying to Him, “Whence do you know me? Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip summons you, when you are under the fig tree, I perceived you.” Nathanael answered and is saying to Him, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God! Thou art the King of Israel!” Jesus answered and said to him, “Seeing that I said to you that ‘I perceived you underneath the fig tree,’ are you believing? Greater things than these should you be seeing!” And He is saying to him, “Verily, verily, I am saying to you, henceforth you shall be seeing heaven opened up and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:47-51)

The general idea to get hold of here is that there is this ladder that connects what is called “heaven” with what is called “earth” and that it allows for the ascending and descending movement of what are called “angels”.

So, what this image presents us with is an image of an unfolding psychological or spiritual process for this is what dreams concern themselves with, and that Jacob’s dream illustrates a connection between different levels of mind. The levels of mind are presented in the relationship of “heaven” to “earth”. Heaven is above and earth is below, so psychologically, heaven represents what is of a higher or finer quality of mind and life while earth refers to what is of a lower or coarser quality of mind and life. These terms refer to two different modes of consciousness. Another way of thinking about this idea of higher and lower is think in terms of what is interior and exterior. Things of an interior nature have to do with the interior aspects of our mental life or spirit. These are things concerned with eternal realities such as the well-being of our soul, while those of an exterior nature have to do with temporal things or those aspects of our mental life that are more focused on the well-being of our body and life in the external world.

When we start out on the journey to wholeness our level of consciousness is basically confined to the lower or “earth” level of being. In this stage of development our mental life revolves around a sense of self that is completely immersed in what the physical senses offer as a picture of reality. In this sense of self we find our identity within a psychological matrix that is centred on the belief that how things appear to the senses is how things actually are. At its core is the belief that the feeling of life we sense within ourselves is something intrinsic to us; in other words we believe that we have life in ourselves. The power of this feeling is so convincing, so pervasive, that it is impossible for us to separate our identity or sense of self from it. This is the basis of the love of self. We love this sense of self as our self, so much so, that anything that calls its legitimacy as “our self” into question is fiercely resisted. It needs to be pointed out here, in case it’s not obvious, that everything that flows into our mind from the Lord and heaven calls the legitimacy of this belief into question. So, to the degree that our identity is woven into this earth born self then to that degree we will be in a state of life that is opposed to, and resistant of what is from the Lord. Consider the following from the work, Divine Providence 158 where Swedenborg testifies saying…

I have been fully convinced that nothing I will and think is from myself but that it only appears as from myself; and it has also been granted to me to will and love this.

then in Divine Providence 176 it states

…everything a man wills, thinks, speaks and does should appear to him to be from himself…[for] without that appearance no man would have anything of his own… he would have no proprium… in a word he would not be a man.

Divine revelation teaches that this feeling that we have life in ourselves is actually an appearance, that contrary to how we experience the feeling of life in willing and thinking from our self, our life is something that flows into us from the One and Only life and source, namely the Lord. I don’t know how this idea that everything you experience as your mental life is not actually from you sits, but I’ll hazard a guess that everything in that self we identify with taken from external life finds it offensive whether we are conscious of that or not. Until we see the truth of this, not just intellectually but emotionally, we will remain in the belief that we have life in our self regardless of what we profess we believe with our lips. You see what we profess to believe and what our responses to life reveal to be the beliefs we actually hold and live from, don’t necessarily align. But anyone can, with a little reflection, see what that difference might be for them. Until this is seen we essentially hold that our self is ‘life itself’ and because this belief is opposed to the truth of how things actually are, that the Lord alone is life, it can only produce what is evil and false.

People often take issue with the idea that the Word states that human beings as to their proprium or sense of self, are nothing but evil and falsity. But what else can a sense of self formed around what is diametrically opposed to the good and truth of the Lord’s inflowing life be, but evil and false. The idea that this sense of self is infernal isn’t a personal judgement we need to get defensive about, it’s just a statement of fact that needs to be accepted. Once accepted the possibility to be reborn or regenerated moves that much closer because we move from a belief that is opposed to the essential nature of the life flowing in, to one that is aligned with it. This first sense of self that we come into as a form of “life”is opposed to what real life is, and it is actually what is meant in the Word by those who are dead in the following,

Then another of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” (Matthew 8:21-22)

What is meant by “the dead” can be seen in the work Apocalypse Explained 694 where it states that…

…death, when spoken of man, means a lack of ability to understand truth and perceive good… and this defect exists when the internal spiritual man has not been formed, for this is formed by means of truths from good. In this internal man resides the faculty of understanding truth and of perceiving good, for this man is in heaven and in the light thereof, and he who is in the light of heaven is a living man. But when the natural man only has been formed, and not at the same time the spiritual, then there is no faculty of understanding and perceiving the truths and goods of heaven and of the church, because such a man has no light from heaven; for this reason, such a man is called dead.

The key idea to hold onto here is that the terms “dead” and “living” from a spiritual perspective hang solely on the ability to understand truth and perceive what is good. A natural man, or mind, that is formed apart from a spiritual mind is said to be dead, which really means dead to what is good and true.

The implications of this are significant, for it means that there is nothing in an unregenerate mind, in and of itself, that can lift the sense of self out of the evil and falsity that forms the matrix of its identity. Something of a different quality and order altogether is needed if the sense of self is to be extracted from the hellish prison of its identification with evil and falsity born of the loves of self and the world as its life. That something, is divine revelation from out of “heaven”, or ideas of a higher order – what is called the Word of God or the Logos. This is that which comes down from heaven and so can enter back into heaven taking with it all that are willing to receive it as the basis for a new sense of self. This is why salvation is not possible apart from Divine revelation and the reception of truths from the Word. These truths shine their light into the psychological darkness of every mind whose sense of self is steeped in evil and falsity, opening the way for a new sense of self, a new mind, to be conceived and born. This is what is means to be born again.

The formation of a spiritual mind, or a spiritual man, can only take place through the integration of the Word into a person’s life through the practice of its truths as the basis for self-examination and repentance. It is the practice of the Word that is the good that gives rise to the truths that constitute the spiritual man, or mind. It involves the transfer of the sense of self out of the loves of self and the world and into love of the Lord and one’s neighbour. The Gospels clearly teach that the sense of self formed of the earth must die before a new sense of self, formed in the natural from the spiritual, can be born. And, as was stated from the work the Apocalypse Revealed, this new mind or man is formed by means of “truths from good”, i.e., truths born of the practice of the Word. It can be seen that, psychologically or spiritual speaking, there is a very practical aspect to this often vaguely understood idea of what it means to be born again, or to be born from above.

Let’s circle back now to the idea that our sense of self exists within a psychological matrix. Being psychological in nature we can think of this matrix as an organised mental structure or an organic form through which we experience being conscious or have the experience of possessing a sense of self. It is composed of every affection every thought, every belief, value, delight, every memory, every experience and all the associations we make in relation to all this being drawn together and organised into a form receptive of life. As life inflows into this form, it animates it into an expression of the image and likeness of the core love that sits at its centre. So, whatever makes up the centre sets the pattern for everything else organised around it. The implication of this is that the centre governs the form of the whole so that the form of the whole reinforces and supports the centre. This is captured in a statement from the small work Brief Exposition of the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 40 as follows…

For …the inmost, constitutes the very essence of the sequences; and the essence, as a soul, forms them into a body after its own image;

it then goes on to say…

and then when in its descent it lights upon truths, it infects them also with its own blemish and error.

So long as the belief of having life in oneself holds sway at the core of our sense of self then, even if there are truths present in the natural mind, they are organised in a way that supports this false belief and so the mind remains in a disordered state. It needs to be understood that this belief is so fundamental to the sense of self we have acquired from believing the appearances of the senses to be real that nothing feels more true or more right to us, so much so, that anything that challenges it is viewed with deep suspicion. When speaking of the unregenerate natural (carnal) mind Paul in his letter to the Romans (8:7) states that;

…the carnal mind is hostile to God; for it will not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so.

In Arcana Coelestia 5650 this resistant state of the natural mind to the very spiritual laws that make up the inflowing life of the Lord is described as follows…

…the natural man apart from the spiritual man…loves his concupiscences because he loves himself and the world. Hence he becomes anxious [when thinking about having to give these up], and supposes that if these were got rid of he would have no life left, for he invests everything in the natural or external man… When the natural man on being left to himself is in this state, he draws back and resists.

We see then, that the default state of the natural that our sense of self is invested in, prior to being awakened to spiritual life, is hostile towards the Lord and so those things belonging to heavenly and spiritual life i.e what is good and true. This sense of self or proprium can produce nothing but evil and falsity because everything it produces flows forth from loving above all else the feeling that it has life in itself as something intrinsic to itself. This love and the belief that flows forth from it amounts to a belief that one is divine. It can’t avoid falling into this belief despite how much it might deny it. To claim to have life in oneself is to attribute what is divine to oneself and thus to deny the Lord who is the Only Life. The structure of the mind that forms around this love can only be in form an image of hell. In fact, in Arcana Coelestia 1064{3} it states that “…everyone in hell wishes to be a god.” So, to be in hell is to be in the belief that the feeling of being a self is real and not an appearance granted by the Lord who is the only Self.

Clearly, what is a form of hell can’t receive what is heavenly into itself. If our sense of self is a form receptive of hell then if we are to receive what is heavenly, a new form of mind is needed. To be able to receive heaven requires a new sense of self that is in the form of heaven. To enter into the experience of heaven is only possible if our sense of self, and so our mind, has been formed from what is of heaven and so is receptive of what is heavenly. If our sense of self is opposed to what is good and true then the only experience open to us in that state or to that form of mind is what’s produced through receiving the opposite of what makes heaven, namely what is evil and false. This sense of self is referred to in the following from the work Arcana Coelestia by the term “Own”.

The state of man when in his Own, or when he supposes that he lives from himself, is compared to “deep sleep” and indeed by the ancients was called deep sleep; and in the Word it is said of such that they have “poured out upon them the spirit of deep sleep” (Isa. 29:10), and that they sleep a sleep (Jer. 51:57). That man’s Own is in itself dead, and that no one has any life from himself, has been shown so clearly in the world of spirits, that evil spirits who love nothing but their Own, and obstinately insist that they live from themselves, were convinced by sensible experience, and were forced to confess that they do not live from themselves. For a number of years I have been permitted in an especial manner to know how the case is with what is man’s own, and it has been granted to me to perceive clearly that I could think nothing from myself, but that every idea of thought flows in, and sometimes I could perceive how and whence it flowed in. The man who supposes that he lives from himself is therefore in what is false, and by believing that he lives from himself appropriates to himself everything evil and false, which he would never do if his belief were in accordance with the real truth of the case. (Arcana Coelestia 150)

Nothing evil and false is ever possible which is not man’s Own, and from man’s Own, for the Own of man is evil itself, and consequently man is nothing but evil and falsity. (Arcana Coelestia 154)

If “man is nothing but evil and falsity” there is nothing in him, or able to be produced by him, that can raise him out of that state. Without outside help it is impossible for the sense of self born of the loves of self and the world to find its way out of the hell it is in. This state is dire, and the natural man is totally unaware of the predicament it is in. He is unaware of the abject terror of the situation. Salvation is only possible through the rebirth into a new sense of self. It needs to be born from above, from what is higher. But for that to happen what is higher must be able to penetrate into the dark chaotic void of the unregenerate mind. There is a need for a ladder that connects heaven and earth so that higher spiritual things might be able to exert their influence to birth a new heavenly sense of self.

This rebirth from what is higher takes place through instruction in spiritual things. The ladder that sets up a link between heaven and earth upon which the angels of God can be seen ascending and descending is formed from the teachings offered through doctrines for Spiritual Christianity. For, as has already been pointed out, the unregenerate natural mind is incapable of generating what’s needed to extract our sense of self from its identification with the evils and falsities that form the basis for our life. So, we have the statement from the Lord in the Gospels that…

…no one has ascended into heaven except the One descending from out of the midst of heaven: the Son of Man who is existing within the midst of heaven. (John 3:1)

If you recall by the “Son of Man” is meant the Word or more specifically our understanding of the Word. The Word or Logos is that One that has descended from out of the midst of heaven, and having done so is the only One that is able to ascend back into the midst of heaven. Of course, spiritually speaking the Logos is continually descending and ascending from out of and into the midst of heaven. From a Logopraxis perspective, the Sacred Scriptures and doctrines for Spiritual Christianity are the Logos or Word in a form accessible to us as Sacred Text. The Word itself is what conjoins interior or the heavenly and the exterior or earthly levels of mind when applied to life. The Logos descends and clothes itself with the ideas found within heavenly and earthly states of consciousness that form the human mind. The understanding of the Word a person has is called the Son of Man. It is specifically the doctrine or spiritual teachings drawn from the Word, the Logos, that relate to the matters of redemption, salvation, reformation and regeneration (Doctrine of the Lord 22)

It is doctrine or the Logos that opens the human mind to what is higher and so is able to elevate the sense of self out of its identification with evil and falsity into what is good and true (see Arcana Coelestia 9424{2-3}). The Lord is doctrine Itself (see Arcana Coelestia 5321{1}) and this doctrine when accommodated to angelic and human capacities is the ladder set up upon the earth having its head in the heavens. As we know, the Word as it descends through the heavens (comes forth into angelic awareness) clothes itself with what is in their minds and so in this way the Word is adapted to each degree of angelic perception. Then when it descends or is projected more exteriorly into natural human minds, it is clothed with those natural states of mind found there so as to be adapted to the level of what is of the earth, to be finally ultimated in the form of Sacred Texts. Each level of adaptation serves as a rung on the ladder providing truths that can lift the mind from its sensual base into ever increasing degrees of spiritual perception. Upon these rungs, as a support, angels are said to ascend and descend. In the Apocalypse Revealed it states that…

…”angels,” in an abstract sense, signify Divine truths from the Lord… (see also Last Judgement 28).

Now these “angels” that are seen ascending and descending upon the Son of Man when heaven is opened, offer a symbolic image of the process by which the spiritual mind (what is called heaven) is opened. Angels represent interior truths or an understanding of the Word in terms of its application to psychological states or the life of mind. It is this understanding that makes possible the regeneration of the human mind. They are said to be ascending and descending on the Son of Man because “the Son of Man” is the Word that contains these interior truths that can elevate the mind or, our sense of self, from out of an earthly or natural state into a spiritual or heavenly state.

That “the Son of man” signifies the Lord in respect to the Word, was the reason why the prophets also were called sons of man. The reason why the prophets were called sons of man, was that they represented the Lord in respect to the Word, and consequently signified the doctrine of the church from the Word. In heaven nothing else is understood by “prophets” as mentioned in the Word; for the spiritual signification of “prophet,” as well as of “son of man,” is the doctrine of the church from the Word; and, when predicated of the Lord, “prophet” means the Word itself. (Doctrine of the Lord 28)

The ascending angels speak to the application of truths to the life of the mind in an effort to identify evils and falsities so that they can be removed from the centre of the mind to its periphery. The descending angels speaks to those truths that flow forth from good after ascending truths have been integrated into the life, giving birth to a new sense of self in which the Lord alone is acknowledged to be the Only Life. This is where the feeling of life in oneself is seen to be the appearance it is. To be in the life of this state of acknowledgement is what is means to be being born again or born from above.

References

Arcana Coelestia 940. And said, Behold the blood of the covenant. That this signifies the conjunction of the Lord in respect to the Divine Human with heaven and with earth, is evident from the signification of “blood,” as being the Divine truth that proceeds from the Divine Human of the Lord (of which above, n. 9393, 9399); and from the signification of “the covenant,” as being conjunction (of which also above, n. 9396). That the conjunction with heaven and with earth is signified, is because the Divine truth that proceeds from the Divine Human of the Lord passes through the heavens down to man, and on the way is accommodated to each heaven, and lastly to man himself. Divine truth on our earth is the Word (n. 9350-9362), which is of such a character that in respect to each and all things it has an internal sense which is for the heavens; and finally an external sense, which is the sense of the letter, and which is for man. From this it is evident that through the Word there is conjunction of the Lord with the heavens and with the world (n. 2143, 7153, 7381, 8920, 9094, 9212, 9216, 9357, 9396).

[2] A sure conclusion from this is that without the Word on this earth there would be no conjunction of heaven, thus no conjunction of the Lord, with man; and if there were no conjunction, the human race on this earth would utterly perish. For that which makes the interior life of man is the influx of truth Divine from the Lord, because this truth Divine is the very light that lights up the sight of the internal man; that is, his understanding; and it is the heavenly heat within this light, which is love, that enkindles and vivifies the will of the internal man. And therefore without this light and heat the internal of man would become blind and cold, and would die, just as the external of man would die if deprived of the heat and light of the sun of the world. But this will appear as a paradox to those who do not believe that the Word is of such a nature; and also to those who believe that life is in man as his own, and does not continually flow in through heaven from the Lord.

Canons 18. CHAPTER V. THE HUMAN OF THE LORD JEHOVAH IS “THE SON OF GOD SENT INTO THE WORLD.”

1. Jehovah God sent Himself into the world whereby He assumed the Human.

2. This Human, conceived from Jehovah God, is called “the Son of God, which was sent into the world.”

3. This Human is called “the Son of God,” and “the Son of Man”; “the Son of God,” from the Divine Truth and the Divine Good in Him, which is the Word; and “the Son of Man,” from the Divine Truth and the Divine Good from Him, which is the doctrine of the church from the Word.

Doctrine of the Lord 27. That the Lord is called “the Son of man” when Redemption, Salvation, Reformation, and Regeneration are treated of

Arcana Coelestia 5650 … before the natural man is conjoined with the spiritual, or the external with the internal, he is left to think whether he desires to get rid of the concupiscences arising from the love of self and of the world, together with the things by which he has defended them, and to yield the command to the spiritual or internal man. He is left to think this in order that he may be free to choose what he will. When the natural man apart from the spiritual thinks about this, he rejects it; for he loves his concupiscences because he loves himself and the world. Hence he becomes anxious, and supposes that if these were got rid of he would have no life left, for he vests everything in the natural or external man; or supposes that afterward he could do nothing of himself, and all that he would think, will, and do, would flow in through heaven, thus that he would not be his own master any longer. When the natural man on being left to himself is in this state, he draws back and resists. But when some light flows into his natural through heaven from the Lord, he begins to thinks differently, namely, that it is better for the spiritual man to have the supremacy, because thereby he can think and will what is good, and so can come into heaven, but not if the natural man were to rule. And when he reflects that all the angels in the universal heaven are of this character, and that they are consequently in unspeakable joy, he then fights with the natural man, and at last desires it to be subordinated to the spiritual man. In this state is the man placed who is to be regenerated, in order that he may be in freedom to turn whither he will; and so far as he turns to this in freedom, so far he is being regenerated.

Arcana Coelestia 3321 [2] Hence it is that man’s rational can be accommodated to truths and receive them before his natural, as may be plainly seen from the fact that with one who is to be regenerated the rational man battles much with the natural; or what is the same, the internal man with the external. For as also is known, the internal man can see truths and also will them, but the external refuses assent and resists; for in the natural man there are memory-knowledges which are in a great measure derived from the fallacies of the senses, and which notwithstanding their being false the man believes to be true; there are also things innumerable which the natural man does not apprehend; for he is relatively in shade and thick darkness, and that which he does not apprehend, he believes either not to exist, or not to be so; there are likewise cupidities which are of the love of self and of the world, and all things that favor these he calls truths; and when the man yields to these the dominion, all things that result are contrary to spiritual truths. There are also in the natural man reasonings that are grounded in falsities impressed from infancy. Moreover, man apprehends by manifest sense what is in his natural man, but not so what is in his rational, until he has put off the body. This also causes him to believe the body to be everything; and all that does not fall into the natural sense, he scarcely believes to be anything.

Arcana Coelestia 6097. All temptations appear evil, for the reason that they are interior anxieties and griefs, and as it were damnations; for the man is then let into the state of his evils, consequently among evil spirits, who accuse him, and thus torment the conscience; nevertheless the angels defend him, that is, the Lord through angels, for the Lord keeps him in hope and trust, which are the forces of combat from within whereby he resists. Especially is the natural let into temptations when it is receiving the spiritual, because in the natural reside evils of life and falsities of doctrine

Divine Providence 86. As the evil man as well as the good man has rationality and liberty, so the evil man as well as the good man is able to understand truth and do good; but while the good man is able to do this from freedom in accordance with reason, the evil man is not; because the evil man is in the enjoyment of the love of evil, while the good man is in the enjoyment of the love of good. Consequently the truth that the evil man understands and the good that he does are not appropriated to him, while to the good man good and truth are appropriated, and without appropriation as one’s own there is no reformation nor regeneration. For in the wicked, evils with falsities are as it were in the center, while goods with truths are in the circumferences; but in the good, goods with truths are in the center and evils with falsities are in the circumferences; and in both cases that which is at the center flows out even to the circumferences, as heat from a central fire, or as cold from a central frigidity. Thus in the evil the goods in the circumferences are defiled by the evils at the center; while in the good, the evils in the circumferences are moderated by the goods at the center. This is why evils do not damn the regenerate man, and goods do not save the unregenerate man.

And lifting is Jacob his eyes and seeing, and behold! Esau, his brother, is coming, and with him four hundred men. And dividing is Jacob the children to Leah and to Rachel and to the two maids. And placing is he the maids and their children first, and Leah and her children after them, and Rachel and Joseph last. And he passes before them and is prostrating himself to the earth seven times till he is close to his brother. And running is Esau to meet him. And embracing him is he, and falling on his neck and kissing him, and they are weeping. And lifting is he his eyes and seeing the women and the children. And saying is he, “What are these to you? And saying is he, “The children which the Elohim graciously gives your servant. And close are coming the maids, they and their children, and they are prostrating themselves. And, moreover, close are coming Leah and her children, and prostrating themselves. And, afterward, close come Joseph and Rachel, and they are prostrating themselves. And saying is he, “What is all this camp to you which I encountered? And saying is he, “To find grace [for your servant] in the eyes of my lord. And saying is Esau, “Forsooth, mine is much, my brother. Be yours what is yours. And saying is Jacob, “You must not, pray. Pray, if I find grace in your eyes, then take my present offering from my hand, for therefore I see your face, as if seeing the face of the Elohim, and accepting me are you. Take, pray, my blessing which I bring to you, for gracious to me is the Elohim in that it, forsooth, is all mine. And urging it on him is he, and he is taking it. (Genesis 33:1-11)

And Esau said, I have much, my brother, be to thee what is to thee. That this signifies tacit acceptance, in order that he might thus instill the affection of the good from truth, may be seen from this refusal, in that it involves assent; for he nevertheless accepted. In anyone’s refusing and at the same time accepting, the end sometimes is that affection may be instilled; and moreover this is thereby increased, and thus passes from thinking well into willing well. In spiritual life man is led by the Lord by things nearly like those by which a man leads others in civil life, in which it is usual to refuse to accept, to the end that the giver may act from affection; thus not from thinking only, but also from willing. For if the favour should not be accepted, the end in view would be lost; and therefore the end urges the giver to think of it still more intently, and thus to will it from the heart. (Arcana Coelestia 4366)

You hear that it was declared to the ancients, ‘You shall not murder.’ Yet whoever should be murdering shall be liable to the judging Yet I am saying to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to the judging. Yet whoever may be saying to his brother, ‘Raka!’ shall be liable to the Sanhedrin. Yet whoever may be saying, ‘Stupid!’ shall be liable to the Gehenna of fire. If, then, you should be offering your approach present on the altar, and there you should be reminded that your brother has anything against you, leave your approach present there, in front of the altar, and go away. First be placated toward your brother, and then, coming, be offering your approach present. (Matthew 5:21-24)

The story of Jacob and Esau is a story of separation and reconciliation. Their separation was the result of a series of incidents in which Jacob took advantage of Esau to wrest his birthright from him and secure it for himself. Then in a further twist, by an act of blatant deception, he stole the blessing reserved for Esau by coming to his father Isaac disguised as his brother. All this meant that Jacob had to flee from his home, which he did, to the house of Laban, his uncle on his mother’s side. There, in this state of self-imposed exile, he laboured for many years securing flocks and herds, the two daughters of Laban, Leah and Rachel, became his women and by them and their handmaids fathered 11 sons and a daughter. Due to Jacob’s increase in wealth and status, it became increasingly more difficult for him and Laban to dwell together, so he separated from Laban, with all that was his and began the journey home to his father’s house.

It is at this point that we pick up the story and find Jacob journeying home and in the process having to face his brother Esau, not knowing how he would be received.

What we are going to focus on specifically in this story is the spiritual applications of what’s represented by Esau’s initial refusal to accept Jacob’s gift, and Jacob’s pressing him to accept it. So when we speak of a thing’s spiritual application we mean its application to the regeneration of the human mind, specifically to the processes involved in how the Lord as the Word brings about changes in the forms of affections and thoughts that make up a person’s interior and exterior mental life.

So with that in mind, we leave behind Jacob and Esau as historical personages and focus on what they represent as the Word living within our minds as we seek to practice its truths as the basis for our spiritual life. The meaning of names given to places and people in the Word often can open a door into seeing beyond the literal meaning of the Text into its spiritual applications. And this is true of the meaning of the Hebrew names for Jacob and Esau. The root word from which the name Jacob is derived means, to restrain, whereas the root for Esau means, to do.

These meanings were clearly illustrated at their birth, where Esau was born first followed by his twin Jacob of whom we are told, “took hold of Esau’s heel” Gen 25:26, with the implicit meaning of restraining him. Now in the Word where there are two persons or things held in a relationship with each other one relates to what is good, or of love, and the other to what is true, or of wisdom. Truth is the form of good, or that by which good is made manifest, and as such we see that truth carries a quality of restraint in relation to good through providing it with a form by which the good can be intellectually apprehended. Truth as the form of good binds or limits it. So in the Arcana Coelestia 4205 it states that…

…the reception of good is not possible in any other way than according to truths, truths being that which good flows into; for good is the agent, and truth is the recipient; and therefore all truths are recipient vessels (n. 4166). As truths are that which good flows into, truths are what limit the inflow of good; and this is what is here meant by the limit that defines how much can flow in from good.

From this we can see that our understanding of truths limits what we are able to receive as to good because it is our understanding of truths that determines what we will accept as being good. It will also have a significant bearing on our response when good approaches. The root meaning of Esau’s name and other derivative words from that root point to his representation as good. At its most fundamental level the root means, to do, to work, to make, create, or form something, to develop, to press in. Thus we see it carries the idea of something active, hence his representation as good in this story. Jacob and all that belongs to him bows down before Esau, therefore he represents what is passive or subservient to good which is truth, this being the recipient vessel into which good as the active principle flows.

The meeting of the two brothers represents how the understanding of truths we have acquired through practicing them as the basis for our life, represented by Jacob, is brought into connection with the inflowing good from the Lord that enters into the natural mind via the inner path of the soul represented by Esau. Our understanding of truths is always limited, for we are finite, and so our progress toward a higher quality of good can only unfold step by step as a gradual process or journey from a more obscure state to a less obscure state as our understanding of truths develops through their practice.

If you read through this story in the Arcana you’ll find that the representation of Jacob changes. Earlier in the series, we find that he represents truth and then later, as at this point of the story, there is a shift so that he is now said to represent good. This can lead to some confusion so let’s try to clarify things.

In the earlier part of the story, Jacob is in the process of acquiring what will form the basis for his life. Essentially he is using his time with Laban as the means by which he can extract what he feels can be properly called his own. He then comes to acknowledge that all that he has acquired while in Laban’s house is from the Lord, and this is especially the case when challenged by Laban at the critical point of their separation. The point is that all these facets of the story are illustrative of our own experience of working with truths from the Word. In the initial stages of development, it is an affection for facts and the gathering memory-knowledges from the Word that predominates, this being a function of the intellectual faculty and so the representation of this in the story is that of Jacob in the house of Laban acquiring wealth and status.

When this state of acquiring has run its course, the situation changes and a process of separation begins and this is represented by Jacob separating from Laban. Internally this is a process involving the extraction of goods and truths in the natural that can support the further development of a person’s spiritual life from that which served as a means to acquiring those things but have now become superfluous, having served their use. This is represented by Jacob taking leave of Laban and undertaking a journey home. Because journeying involves movement through space it spiritually represents the psycho-spiritual journey that brings about changes in the state of the affections and thoughts of the mind.

To journey signifies to put into practice what one knows. And when truths are practiced they are elevated out of the memory and enter into the life where they become good or something now belonging to the will. In this way, they form the basis for a new will in the understanding, for which we have the phrase the good of truth. It is here that the representation of Jacob changes from truth to the good of truth, or the kind of good to which the Divine Good in the natural represented by Esau can be joined. There is an important principle here and it is this, the Lord can only be joined to the good of truth, i.e. to truths that have through practice have become one with the life. Salvation is not effected through the knowledge of truth, but only through its practice for to practice truths in an effort to identify and shun evils as sins is what is meant by the term charity. The Lord is effectively the new will and as we have seen there is no new will apart from the practice of truths for it is only through the practice of truths that they become the good of truth and so receptive of the Lord’s inflowing life.

We turn now to what’s involved in the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau. The spiritual life is largely one of coming to see that what the Word says is true regarding the human condition is actually how things are. All the struggles we face in coming to terms with this seeing of things, of accepting that the Word is, in fact, the Divine Truth, the Lord, is due to our dogged determination to remain identified with what resists the approach of the Lord’s love as the basis for our life. We may rail against the process, but the truth is, it only unfolds in our experience in the way it does because we are invested in proprial states of life that we claim as our self. The Divine Good approaches to free us from those things that bind us, but like Jacob we misunderstand the intentions of the approaching good (Esau) seeing it as a potential threat come to destroy us. And in one sense this is true, for to acquire a new basis for our life the old must first die.

The opening verse of Genesis 33 states,

And lifting is Jacob his eyes and seeing, and behold! Esau, his brother, is coming, and with him four hundred men. And dividing is Jacob the children to Leah and to Rachel and to the two maids.

Jacob represents the natural mind’s grasp of spiritual realities that have been acquired by external means through the senses. He represents what can be given by the Lord when a person engages with the Word as if of themselves. While nothing from the Lord can be acquired by a person as a result of their own effort, it remains a spiritual law that spiritual life can only be granted by the Lord when a person responds affirmatively to the Word in an effort to practice its truths. All effort is the product of an affection, and the affection for truth which generates a person’s interest in spiritual things is from the Lord but is given to them as if it were something arising from themselves. What this means is that what is drawn from Word that forms our more external understanding of spiritual things is laden with a sense of having merited what we have gained, or in other wor,ds whether we are conscious of it or not, at this stage of spiritual development the external man is in the belief that what it has acquired from the Word is a product of its own effort and intellectual power. It is a false belief of course but a powerful one, and every person engaged in the practice of the Word will have to confront this claiming what is the Lord’s as one’s own at some point in their spiritual development.

The real issue is that this belief becomes so core to a person’s sense of self that the prospect of having to give it up gives rise to feelings of fear and anxiety as they confront the possibility of their psychological dissolution or the death of their self and the associated doubt regarding the reality of a rebirth or resurrection. For while their proprium has been invested in the acquisition of spiritual truths for building up its sense of self those same truths will also prove to be this self’s undoing. And we can see this in the opening statement, “And lifting is Jacob his eyes and seeing, and behold! Esau, his brother, is coming, and with him four hundred men.” Now think about this from Jacob’s perspective. Here comes his brother with a force well capable of exacting his revenge for the wrongs Jacob had done to him. Jacob knows that Esau would be well within his rights to destroy him and all that he has for he took what was rightfully Esau’s for himself. And this is true of us all. We have claimed what is of the Lord for ourselves, both His birthright and blessing. It is a mark of the inherited proprial nature that it takes the appearance of life, that arises from the insensible inflow of Divine life into the our very soul, as proof positive that the feeling that we have life in ourselves is an immutable truth and not the appearance that Divine revelation clearly teaches it to be.

But despite the persuasive strength of the feeling that we have life in ourselves, we are aware that truths point to a deeper, alternative, source of life. They supply what’s needed to release the mind from the grip the appearances of the senses and lift it into the light of the spiritual sense of Word. Despite the risks, Jacob is compelled to return home and in the process must be reconciled to his brother which means being prepared to give up his life and have all that he has placed into the hands of Esau. This represents what is required of all who enter into the processes associated with the regeneration of the human mind by the Lord. For the light that comes from truths worked into the life points to the need to return what we have claimed from the Lord as our own back to Him.

So as the Gospel declares, if we are to find our life we must first give it up. This is no easy thing to do and it can’t be done without going through what amounts to a spiritual or existential crisis. Jacob’s fear and anxiety is that he will lose all that he has and that that could include his own life and the lives of those with him. What then is Jacob’s response? How does the human mind respond to the advancing Divine Good of the Natural represented by Esau, and the truths that come with this represented by the 400 men? It projects its anxieties and fears onto what is good and true, and sees that which is come to save as a threat to its life. There is a spiritual principle here and it is this, to the lower what is higher always appears to be a threat. This leads to the misattribution or projection of negative qualities onto the approaching good that will need to be rectified before a new state of life can be realised. This process of reconciliation between what is represented spiritually by these estranged brothers is captured in the Lord’s words from Matthew’s Gospel where he says…

You hear that it was declared to the ancients, ‘You shall not murder.’ Yet whoever should be murdering shall be liable to the judging Yet I am saying to you that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judging… If, then, you should be offering your gift on the altar, and there you should be reminded that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there, in front of the altar, and go your way. First, be reconciled toward your brother, and then, coming, be offering your gift. (Matthew 5:21-24)

These words of the Lord provide us with insight into what’s going on in the story of the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau and it is infilled by the following teaching from the Apocalypse Explained 391{20 & 21}…

“To offer a gift upon the altar” means in the spiritual sense to worship God, and to worship God means worship both internal and external, namely, from love and from faith, and thus from the life; this is meant because in the Jewish Church worship consisted chiefly in offering sacrifices or gifts upon the altar, and the chief thing is taken for the whole. From this the meaning of these words of the Lord in the spiritual sense can be seen, namely, that Divine worship consists primarily in charity towards the neighbor, and not in piety without that; “to offer a gift upon the altar” means worship from piety, and “to be reconciled to a brother” means worship from charity, and this is truly worship, and such as this is such is the worship from piety.

That “If thou shalt offer thy gift upon the altar” signifies in all worship, is evident from the Lord’s words in Luke 17:4 [Matt. 18:22], where it is said that the brother or neighbour must be forgiven all the time, “seventy times seven” there signifying always.

And from the Doctrine of Life number 73…

To be “reconciled to one’s brother” is to shun enmity, hatred, and revenge; that it is to shun them as sin is evident.

And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2)

We come now to the second verse of the opening chapter of the book of Genesis that introduces us to the conditions that serve as the basis from which the spiritual man is created and brought forth into existence. Remembering that the Text is a spiritual work or revelation whose contents is solely concerned with conveying spiritual realities, its subject is the creation of what is truly human through the regeneration of the human mind. This being the case it is important, particularly if we are to maintain a spiritual focus, that we remove our thinking from any associations the letter of the Text excites related to the creation of a material universe in space and time. This is not what is being described here but rather what the Lord is providing through His Word are insights into the inner processes and states of consciousness involved in bringing into existence a spiritual being called Man, who is created male and female in the image and likeness of God.

In verse two we have laid out before us the condition of every natural mind or man prior to its regeneration. Of this mind, we read that the earth was without form and void, and that darkness was upon the face of the deep. Every word is pregnant with meaning. Earth or “erets,” as it is called in the Hebrew Text, provides us with the natural image that corresponds to the mental earth or the external mind. We see that it is described as formless and void, which indicates that prior to its regeneration the external mind is devoid of what’s needed to give it a spiritual or celestial quality. The external mind, being natural, serves as a kind of ground, or the basis and foundation of which things of a spiritual and celestial origin can be planted and take root. So when the earth is said to be “without form,” what is meant, as it relates to the mental world, is that it has nothing of truth present within it while the state of being “void” means that there is nothing of good present.

The next statement describes the quality of the unregenerate self or person when viewed from a spiritual perspective in the light of what the Word teaches. This is said to be, “a deep or an abyss, upon the face of which is darkness.” When there is nothing of truth and good present in the mind, then evil and falsity invariably reign as the leading principles from which that person lives. This, of course, is not something acknowledged by those in whom evils and falsities reign, for in this state all regard their evils as goods and their false thinking as true, but regardless, this verse does describe the state of every mind prior to its regeneration whether this be acknowledged or not. The spiritual regeneration of the natural mind can only begin from an acknowledgment that what we call our self is nothing but evil and falsity and that the Lord alone is the source of all that is good and true. If this acknowledgment is genuine, a state of humility is induced through which truths and goods of the Word can be received. Without such an acknowledgment, nothing can be received because the state of mind is such that it rejects anything that challenges its own authority to be the sole determiner of what is good and true. But the mind presented here in the Text is one disposed to making this acknowledgment, which can be seen in the statement that, “the Spirit of God was moving on the face of the waters.” The waters here are the pre-regenerative substance from which what is genuinely human, or a spiritual man, can be called forth into existence by the creative activity of the Word.

The terms “formless and void” describe a state of non-existence, for to be without form means that there is nothing of truth and to be void is meant there is nothing of goodness. And as it is truth and goodness that constitutes what is truly human, what is termed a spiritual man, their absence means that in the pre-regenerative phase nothing genuinely human or spiritual yet exists. We see then that the term human, strictly speaking, refers to truths and goods organised into the image and likeness of God or into the human form. This form, the human form, is the Divine form and if the Scriptures are to be understood in terms of their application to the regeneration of the human mind, it must be realised that the human form is primarily a spiritual form or an organised mental form made up of goods and truths from the Word that through their practise, have been integrated into its life. From a spiritual perspective, no one is human due to their physical organisation, shape, or natural attributes. What exists on the physical plane as to human bodies merely represents the human form, the body is simply a physical extension that corresponds to the mind. And it is not until that mind has been made subject to the regenerative activity of the Word, that what is commonly spoken of as a human being, a person, or self, is nothing but falsity and evil, which is to say that it is nothing but formless and void. To be regenerated, to be invested with goods and truths from the Word and to have these form the mind, is what it means to become human. Prior to its spiritual creation man is only human in potential, yet even this, as we shall see, is not a potential that exists in what is its own. Being void of good this pre-regenerative state, spiritually speaking, is void of life, i.e. it has no life in itself, for love, which is good by another name, is life, and life is solely a Divine quality, in other words, there is and can only ever be one life and that life is God.

So what is this pre-regenerative state? Can we give it a name? Well, if it is not life, it must be its opposite, it must be death. If it is intrinsically without good or truth, being described as being without form and void then it can only be evil and falsity. And if this is what the pre-regenerate human self is, then it must be a form of hell, and if hell, then it is proprium. This is what “man” is in and of itself, it is quite literally all that is other than what God is, and therefore it is opposed to the Divine Love that is God. Here in this verse, this state of mind is called, ‘the deep’ or ‘abyss,’ upon the faces of which is darkness. This is the human proprium, or self, prior to the new birth that all must undertake to acknowledge if one is to become a spiritual being. From the Arcana Coelestia, we see it described thus…

The “faces of the deep” are the cupidities of the unregenerate man, and the falsities thence originating, of which he wholly consists, and in which he is totally immersed. In this state, having no light, he is like a “deep” or something obscure and confused. (Arcana Coelestia 18)

To look into the abyss that is the proprium of man is to see nothing but darkness, for there is nothing in man, in and of himself i.e. apart from the Lord, that is not evil and false. Now, this state of evil arises out of believing the appearance, that man has life in itself, to be real. To believe the feeling that life arises from ourselves means that we believe that we are in fact the source of that life but this is directly contrary to what Divine revelation teaches. For there we find time and time again that the feeling of life, as something sourced in, and therefore intrinsic to one’s self, is merely an appearance, for as was stated a few moments ago, the Lord alone is the only Being that has life in Himself.

There are two things needed for the creation of the spiritual mind out of a natural mind that lacks anything good and true in itself. The first is self-consciousness or a sense of personhood, or that which can provide the experienced of having life-in-one’s-self. Having a sense of possessing life in oneself provides for the necessary conditions by which what is other than the Divine can, at least to itself, have a conscious sense of a separate existence. And while this sense of an independent autonomous self is but an appearance, it is one that is so fully and completely convincing, and necessarily so if regeneration is to be possible, that the abyss that is this proprium believes itself to be in possession of real qualities that give it actual substance and form. Believing that feeling of life within itself to be its own, those immersed in this proprial delusion of possessing an autonomous independent self are oblivious to the implications of this fallacious belief. For if true then it would mean that they would be Divine. This is the thick darkness from which all who are to be regenerated or spiritually recreated are called forth from. The essential mistake made in religion is that the self is being saved, where the truth of the matter is that we are actually being saved from what we mistakenly call our self.

The second thing needed if this call to life is to be responded to is something upon which the Spirit of God can work with within the mind. In our Text this is called, the waters upon the faces of which the Spirit of God moves. Without the presence of these waters all hope of a spiritual man ever coming into being would be lost, no one could be regenerated. These waters are what are is of the Lord in man that are given to him as if they were his own and from that, higher heavenly influences can be received in a way whereby the one receiving them can respond as if from themselves. This is necessary because what man is in itself, as to its proprium, is so antagonistic toward what is good and true he must be given the means for his regeneration in such a way that he believes that it is something he has within his own power to bring about. We see then that the appearance of a natural self is provided as a strictly provisional means whereby man can be brought into a new sense of self that is grounded in the Lord as the acknowledged source of its life. The processes of regeneration involve the casting off of the old self so that the new can be put on. The implications of this are clear, the process involves dying to who we think we are, of giving up our sense of person, or proprium. This is much more easily said than done, for that person, that sense of being an autonomous independent being that has its own life, is something we love above all else.

The Spirit of God moving upon the waters is the mercy of the Lord that inflows into the inmost part of the soul. It describes the constant attention given by the Lord to the spiritual wellbeing of all, by working to raise all who are caught in the hell of their proprial sense of person into what is higher so that they might receive a new self, created in the image and likeness of God. The Spirit of God is the Divine Truth that proceeds from the Lord that draws in, organises, and protects every sense impression, concept, idea, and affection that registers within the human mind, and to which good can be adjoined. These things form the waters or the means by which the Lord can regenerate the human mind. Because such things are essential to the processes of regeneration the Lord ensures they are stored up in the most internal regions of the external mind in preparation for when the mind becomes receptive to heavenly influences. When the mind is in a receptive state these waters, or remnants, or remains, are then able to provide what’s needed within the external man so that the Lord, along with higher heavenly influences, can be present and the process of regeneration begun. Here is the teaching on this from the Arcana Coelestia…

By the “Spirit of God” is meant the Lord’s mercy, which is said to “move” or “brood” as a hen broods over her eggs. The things over which it moves are such as the Lord has hidden and treasured up in man, which in the Word throughout are called remains or a remnant, consisting of the knowledges of the true and of the good, which never come into light or day, until external things are vastated. These knowledges are here called “the faces of the waters.” (Arcana Coelestia 19)

So in summary what we have described in this verse is the state of the external mind prior to its regeneration. It consists of three aspects, the earth which is said to be without form and void, the deep upon the faces of which is darkness, and the waters upon the faces of which the Spirit of God moves. By the earth is meant the external mind or man in general, a mind that has nothing of truth or good planted within it and therefore is described as being without form and void. By the deep is meant the proprium, or sense of self, our self-consciousness, or sense of person-hood, which is nothing but thick darkness or evil and falsity. By the waters is meant what Word refers to as the remains of good and truth, and these are those things through which the new spiritual creation called Man is brought into being. These remains, while in the natural are not of the person, for they are from the Lord and as such are that by which the Lord can be present in the mind. They are provided by the Lord so that the regeneration of the natural can take place and the salvation of the human race brought about. Without these remains, our salvation from the hell that is the proprial sense of self, or sense of natural personhood, would not be possible.

Finally, note what is created by the Lord and what is not. The Lord creates the heaven and earth, he does not create the waters or the Spirit of God, nor does he create the deep or the darkness. The heaven and earth form the new creation, the new man, both as to its internal (heaven or rational/spiritual aspect) and external (earth or sensual or scientific) dimensions. This new man is created from what the Lord has implanted and stored up within the interiors of the external mind. These are the remains of goods and truths, or the waters upon the faces of which the Spirit of God or the Word is moving. The deep along with the darkness describes the human proprium, or self-consciousness encased in a sense of personhood. This constitutes what is unregenerate, and because it is non-regenerate it is non-created, for the term creation, spiritually speaking, only applies to the work of regeneration. The sense of self-consciousness that exists prior to regeneration is an appearance and nothing more. It has no reality in itself and, being nothing but evil and falsity, it is without substance and form, and is in fact that which arises in the absence of good and truth. The Lord is not the source of what is evil or false. In short, the Lord does not create the new spiritual man from the proprium or from what is a person’s own, in fact there isn’t anything of what constitutes the personhood or self of the old man to be found in the new creation as is clear from the following…

Such a man (i.e. one who is unregenerate) also, when seen from heaven, appears like a black mass, destitute of vitality. The same expressions likewise in general involve the vastation of man, frequently spoken of by the Prophets, which precedes regeneration; for before man can know what is true, and be affected with what is good, there must be a removal of such things as hinder and resist their admission; thus the old man must needs die, before the new man can be conceived. (Arcana Coelestia 18)

Genesis 1:1 reads…

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

So in our approach to this first story I want you to suspend the notion that this story is about the creation of an independently existing physical universe in space and time and rather begin to bring your attention to the idea that this really is an account of the creation, or the re-creation, or the regeneration, of the human mind. That it presents this in terms of a structure involving a series of steps or stages, which so far as a literal reading of the Text is concerned, involve a series of seven days – six days of creative activity and a seventh day of rest.

The concept of days speaks of the movement of time or changes due to the rotation of the earth in relation to the sun. Now while ancient peoples may have understood the mechanics of this differently, the principle of a day involving a cycle of change remains constant for all peoples, and it is this that I would like us to focus on as we look to see how the concept of a day can be used to provide a framework for understanding the inner recreation of our mental world. To do this we need to try and think as the ancient peoples did, in mythic or symbolic terms. They, unlike us “modern, sophisticated” thinkers, were not literalists, and so would have been very comfortable with thinking holistically in which an interplay between the outer physical world and the inner spiritual world of human consciousness was a living reality.

In fact it is clear from ancient writings, the Bible included, across many cultures, that our ancestors were mythic, and symbolic thinkers, and saw in the outer objects of their senses a rich resource of knowledge that provided deep insights into the inner workings of states of human consciousness. For them, the outer and inner worlds were intimately related and as such were, in practical terms, inseparable. They had an intuitive grasp of the oneness of outer and inner which means that if we are to understand the Biblical Text as a spiritual Text we too must shift the way we think into a symbolic or representative mode in which objects and events of the outer world found in the Text are recast as symbols that point to the inner psychological or spiritual world of mind. If we can do that then we will soon discover the profound wisdom in which our ancestors lived and moved and had their being.

When we bring a symbolic rather than a literalist mindset to the Biblical Text we can see how well the concept of a day, as changes in time, can represent change in a more universal sense. As a symbol it serves as an ideal representation of inner changes of states of consciousness resulting from the activity of Divine Truths from the Word upon the human mind. The Word as the Text of Sacred Scripture is a spiritual Text, given for spiritual purposes. The Lord isn’t interested in giving humanity a natural history lesson. His interest is in the salvation of the human race, and that is reflected in the Texts of Sacred Scripture when they are viewed as the means by which that salvation is effected. A literal understanding of the Text is sufficient for children or for those who can’t raise their understanding above the senses, but if this Text is to support the regeneration of the human mind then a deeper understanding of it is required so that it can be applied to the recreation of the human mind into the image and likeness of its Creator, which, in the end, is all that really matters.

So these days are really accounts of the states of consciousness which a human being traverses through when the Lord, as the Word, works to regenerate or spiritualise the human mind. The function of Sacred Scripture is to serve as the means by which the Lord is able to bring about this heavenly form of mind and He does this through the Text itself which, as something living, has a psychoactive quality to it. What I mean by that is that as the Text is read and engaged with the very thing it describes begins to unfold within the mind itself. The Word is the living breath of God and as Text, it provides the ground into which the Spirit of God, flowing in from the inmost soul of a person, can find a place within their conscious awareness. In this sense, the Word is the conjunctive agent that brings what is created into connection with its Creator.

The Word as a revealed Text forms the divinely appointed foundation by which the human race can be lifted up out of the natural loves of self and the world into those higher spiritual loves, which are love to the Lord, being a love of what is good, and love towards the neighbour, this being a love of what is true.

So our opening statement says…

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

To think naturally or to think from the senses will immediately encase this statement in the two leading principles of the natural world, space and time. Spiritual thought, however, is not concerned with the natural world but is only concerned with the things of the spirit, these being the things of the mind, or states of consciousness, states of affection and thought. For the two principles that govern spiritual thought are those that correspond to the two principles of natural thought, these being love and wisdom, for space corresponds to states of love, or the affectional/motivational side of the mind belonging to the will, while time corresponds to states of wisdom or those things to do with the intellectual side of the mind. All mental phenomena within the human mind reflect states of the will and understanding, as these two faculties are what the human mind consists of. All mental life and activity is the life and activity of the will and understanding.

Therefore to understand the statement spiritually we need to elevate our thought out of the kind of thinking that takes things literally and think instead in terms of states of mind. When approaching Scripture this requires a mode of thought that thinks in representative, symbolic, or mythic terms, where what is read literally is processed and understood in terms of what is being represented spiritually. There is an interplay between levels of meaning in the Text, so that the surface or literal meaning serves as a body through which a deeper spiritual meaning and application can be accessed.

The most general idea conveyed by the opening statement of the book of Genesis is that the source and origin of all that is, is God. That God Is and creates is simply stated in this opening verse as a given, something axiomatic when it comes to engaging in a spiritual life. While the existence of God cannot be proved scientifically it can certainly be intuited rationally or philosophically. It is only through a willingness to affirm this intuition as something true that the Word is opened as to its inner meaning and application and can, therefore, support regeneration or spiritualisation of the natural level of the human mind. It is the acknowledgment of God, on the basis of the claims of the Text that forms “the beginning,” or the initiating state, from which the regeneration of the human mind becomes possible. To acknowledge that God Is, on the basis of what the Word or Text declares to be so, is to affirm the authority of the Text or Word as being of a Divine origin, and if of a Divine origin then it too must be Divine, and if Divine, it is God revealing Himself in a form that is accessible to all.

To understand how God can be the Text or Sacred Scripture we need only quote another reference to “the beginning” found in the profound opening of the Gospel of John…

In the beginning was the Word… and God was the Word… All came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one came into being which has come into being… (John 1)

In this statement from John’s Gospel, we see that the terms, Word and God, are synonymous. We see that it is the Word that creates and brings all into being. If, when speaking of creation we mean spiritually the regeneration of the human mind, then the idea of the Word as Text being an active power by which this is able to be accomplished is certainly an idea that carries possibilities. To reform and regenerate the human mind requires the adoption and integration of spiritual ideas and concepts. To communicate these ideas so that they can find a place within the mind requires a medium and that medium is language, which has as its natural foundation either spoken or written words. The Text of Sacred Scripture offers divine or spiritual ideas clothed in a body of natural imagery that can unfold within the mind to recreate it, if what’s offered is received in an affirmative spirit. Genuine spiritual teachings, if received into the mind as something to be lived from, will transform the mind as these displace belief patterns, attitudes, and values, grounded in a non-spiritual or natural perspective.

So let’s step back a bit from the literal meaning of the terms or words used in this opening statement and try to think about what they might point to so far as states of consciousness go. We begin with the term God. Here, and in fact throughout the whole of Sacred Scripture, God refers to the Lord’s presence in the mind as truth. If we think about how the Divine is present within the mind, then we arrive at this presence as the very truths that have been drawn from the Word and implanted within it. It is teaching of a Divine origin that opens the possibility for the creation of a new mind. The process by which the presence of God is established within the human mind involves having what is from, and therefore of the Lord, being implanted within it. This process involves having present in the more external part of the mind teaching or ideas or concepts, into which what is flowing in by a more internal way can be captured and fixed.

It is the Word as Sacred Text that furnishes the external mind with the materials needed, through which internal or spiritual things can be thought about. It is the Text itself when taken into the mind via the senses that form exterior vessels or a ground into which spiritual things flowing in by an inward way can be received and thereby perceived in a way wherein spiritual realities can present themselves in the conscious awareness of the receiver as new insights. Without the letter of the Word, the natural mind would lack the foundation necessary for that which makes its regeneration possible.

When there is an affirmative response to Divine truths, which involves living from them as the basis for life, changes begin to happen within the mind that are as profound as the changes that occur in the physical processes involved in the conception and development of an embryo into an infant. Only in the matrix of the mind, the changes are conceptual and involve the reorganisation and development of mental substances into spiritual forms that are able to receive new affections and thoughts of a higher, heavenly, or spiritual quality.

So from a spiritual perspective when the Word declares that,

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

we have described the creative efforts of the Divine Truth, or the Word’s operation within the human mind that brings into being what is called “heaven and earth.” By the phrase, “heaven and earth,” we are given insight into the general structure of the new mind or man. When we think about the spatial relationship between the literal heaven and earth we are immediately brought into the idea of what is higher verses what is lower. But when we are talking about states of mind, the spatial idea of height becomes a relationship of internal to external. Heaven describes a plane of mental activity that is higher, finer, more internal than the plane of mental activity that is described by the term earth.

So, in spiritual, or psychological terms, heaven can be understood to be a more internal or spiritual plane of mind, a higher mind if you will, which means that earth must represent a more external or natural plane of mind, this being the lower mind. The relationship of what is higher and lower in the natural world to what is more internal and more external in the mental or spiritual world is a relationship established by a spiritual law which is called the law of correspondence. This spiritual law states; that everything found in the natural world is an effect, being a re-presentation of a corresponding spiritual cause found in the inner world of the mind. At times we shall refer to this mental world as the spiritual world, which is what it is. Through the application of this law of correspondence to the natural imagery found in the Biblical Text, we are able to enter into the world of spirit and gain insight into the mental processes involved in the Word’s regeneration of the human mind. We shall use this law throughout this series which will affirm its use as a basis for understanding the Word as it applies to the inner life.

References

Arcana Coelestia 9034 [3]. In what way truth belonging to the literal sense of the Word serves spiritual truth must be stated briefly. A member of the Church first of all learns truth from the literal sense of the Word. This is general truth suited to the understanding of the external man, who dwells in natural light. That truth is received by an external route, which is that of hearing, and is stored in the external man’s memory, where there are also various pieces of knowledge gained from the world, 2469-2494. Later on matters stored in this memory come under the vision or gaze of the internal man, who sees things in the light of heaven. The internal man selects and summons from among them truths that are in agreement with the good which flows in from the Lord by way of the soul and which the person has accepted. There the Lord joins the truths to the good. The truths joined in that way in the internal man are called spiritual truths, and the good to which the truths have been joined is called spiritual good. This good, given form by the truths, constitutes the person’s spiritual life. The actual truths there are called the truths of faith, and the good is called the good of charity. The good in which the truths have been implanted in that way is the Church with that person.

[4] From all this one may see how truths belonging to the literal sense of the Word serve to give form to spiritual truths, in general to give form to faith and charity which compose spiritual life – life which consists in being fired by an affection for truths because they lead to good, then by an affection for the good that the truths lead to, and finally by an affection for truths that flow from that good.

Arcana Coelestia 9055 [2]. Man has an internal will and an external will, as he has an internal and an external understanding (n. 9050, 9051). The internal will is where the internal understanding is, and the external will is where the external understanding is, because they must be conjoined. For where truth is, there is good; and where good is, there is truth; because truth without good is not truth, and good without truth is not good, for good is the being of truth, and truth is the coming-forth of good. The case is similar with the understanding and the will of man, for the understanding has been allotted to the reception of truth, and the will to the reception of good. Hence it is plain that when man is being regenerated, a new understanding is given him by the Lord by means of the truths of faith, and a new will by means of the good of charity; and that there must be both, and moreover that they must be conjoined, in order that man may be regenerated.

Arcana Coelestia 9408 [5]. That by “heaven and earth” in these and in other passages is signified in the internal sense the church; by “heaven” the internal church, and by “earth” the external church, may be seen above (n. 1733, 1850, 2117, 2118, 3355, 4535), from which it is evident that by the “creation” in the first chapters of Genesis, where it is said, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1); “and the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the army of them” (Gen. 2:1) is meant a new church; for the creation there denotes a new regeneration, which is also called a “new creation,” as can be seen from what was shown in the explications at these chapters.

Apocalypse Revealed 200. By the Word there is the conjunction of the Lord with man, and of man with the Lord, and by that conjunction there is life. There must be something from the Lord, which can be received by man, by which there can be conjunction and thence eternal life. [3] From these things it may appear, that by “the beginning of the creation of God” is meant the Word, and if you will believe it, the Word such as it is in its literal sense, for this sense is the complex of its interior sanctities, as is abundantly shown in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem concerning the Sacred Scripture. And what is wonderful, the Word is so written, that it communicates with the entire heaven, and in particular with every society there, which it has been given me to know by living experience, of which elsewhere. That the Word in its essence is such, is moreover evident from these words of the Lord: The words that I speak to you, they are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63).

Coronos 23. The world has hitherto believed that by “the creation of heaven and earth,” in the first chapter of Genesis, is meant the creation of the universe, according to the letter; and by “Adam,” the first man of this earth. The world could not believe otherwise, since the spiritual or internal sense of the Word has not been disclosed, nor, consequently, that by “creating heaven and earth” is meant to collect and found an angelic heaven from those who have departed the life in the world, and by this means to derive and produce a church on earth (as above, n. 18-20); and that by the names of persons, nations, territories, and cities, are meant such things as relate to heaven, and at the same time to the church: in like manner, therefore, by “Adam.” That by “Adam,” and by all those things which are related of him and his posterity in the first chapters of Genesis, are described the successive states of the Most Ancient Church, which are its rise or morning, its progression into light or day, its decline or evening, its end or night, and after this the Last Judgment upon it, and thereafter a new angelic heaven from the faithful, and a new hell from the unfaithful, according to the series of the progressions laid down in the preceding proposition, has been minutely explained, unfolded and demonstrated in the Arcana Coelestia on Genesis and Exodus, the labor of eight years, published in London; which work being already in the world, nothing further is necessary than to re-capitulate therefrom the universals respecting this Most Ancient Church, which will be cited in the present volume.

[2] At the outset, however, some passages shall be adduced from the Word, by which it is proved, that by “creating” is there signified to produce and form anew, and properly to regenerate; which is the reason that regeneration is called a new creation, by which the whole heaven of angels and the whole church of men, exist, consist and subsist. That “creating” signifies this, is plainly manifest from these passages in the Word:

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a firm spirit in the midst of me (Ps. 51:10).

Thou openest the hand, they are filled with good; Thou sendeth forth the Spirit, they are created (Ps. 104:28, 30).

The people that shall be created shall praise Jah (Ps. 102:18).

Thus said Jehovah, thy Creator, O Jacob; thy Former, O Israel: Every one that is called by My Name, him have I created for My glory (Isa. 43:1, 7).

That they may see, know, attend and understand, that the hard of Jehovah hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it (Isa. 41:20).

In the day that thou wast created, they were prepared; thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, until perversity was found in thee (Ezek. 28:13, 15).

These things are concerning the king of Tyre.

Jehovah that createth the heavens, that spreadeth abroad the earth, that giveth a soul unto the people upon it (Isa. 42:5; 45:12, 18).

Behold I create a new heaven and a new earth; be ye glad to eternity in that which I create: behold I am about to create Jerusalem an exultation (Isa. 65:17, 18).

As the new heavens and the new earth, which I am about to make, shall stand before Me (Isa. 66:22).

I saw a new heaven and a new earth: the former heaven and the former earth are passed away (Apoc. 21:1).

According to promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, in which justice shall dwell (2 Peter 3:13).

From these passages it is now manifested what is spiritually meant in the first chapter of Genesis, by the verses:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; and the earth was “waste and empty” [1, 2].

The earth called “waste and empty,” signifies that there was no longer any good of life nor any truth of doctrine with its inhabitants. That “wasteness” and “emptiness” signify the deprivation of these two essentials of the church, will be established in proposition IV of this volume, respecting the Israelitish Church, by a thousand passages from the Word: at present let the following in Jeremiah serve for some illustration:

I saw the land, when, behold, it was vacant and empty; and I looked towards the heavens, when their light was not. Thus said Jehovah, The whole land shall be wasteness; for this shall the land mourn, and the heavens above shall be made black (4:23, 27, 28).

Apocalypse Explained 294. Because thou hast created all things. That this signifies that from Him is all existence and life, and heaven for those who receive is evident from the signification of creating, as denoting not only that all things exist from the Lord, but also that all life is from Him. And because the spiritual sense of the Word treats only of heaven and the church, therefore by creating is here primarily signified to reform, thus to give heaven to those who receive, for this is to reform. (That the existence of all things is from the Lord, may be seen in the work, Heaven and Hell, n. 7-12 and 137; and that all life is from the Lord, n. 9, in the same work, and in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, n. 278). But by creating, in this passage, is not signified natural existence and life, but spiritual existence and life; this latter is everywhere signified by creating, when mentioned in the Word; the reason is that the existence of heaven and earth is not the end of creation, but a means to the end. The end of creation is, that the human race may exist and that from it there may be an angelic heaven; this therefore being the end, to create signifies to reform, which is to give heaven to those who receive. Ends are what are meant in the spiritual sense of the Word, but, in the sense of the letter, only the means which involve ends are mentioned; in this manner does what is spiritual lie hidden in the letter of the Word.

[2] That to create signifies to reform and regenerate men, and so to establish the church, is evident from those passages in the Word where the term occurs; as in the following: In Isaiah:

“I will give in the wilderness the cedar of shittah, and the myrtle and the oil tree. That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of Jehovah hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it” (xli. 19, 20).

The subject here treated of is the establishment of the church among the nations; the wilderness signifies their not being in good because in ignorance of truth, for all good into which man is reformed is imparted only by truths. The cedar of shittah signifies genuine truths; the myrtle and the oil tree signify spiritual good and celestial good. It is evident therefore what is signified by giving in the wilderness the cedar of shittah, the myrtle and the oil tree, when treating of the nations who are not in the good of heaven and of the church, because in ignorance of truths. That they may see, and know, and consider and understand together, signifies the knowledges, understanding, perception and affection of the love of good and truth; from these significations it is evident that by the Holy One of Israel creating this is signified reformation; consequently, that to create is to reform.

[3] In the same:

“Thus saith Jehovah, thy Creator, O Jacob, and thy Former, O Israel; for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. Bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the end of the earth; even every one that is called by my name I have created for my glory, I have formed and made. I, Jehovah, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King” (xliii. 1, 6, 7, 15).

The subject here treated of is also the establishment of the church among the nations; and from their reformation, Jehovah, is called creator and former; therefore it is said, “I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine.” Bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the end of the earth, signifies the nations that are out of the church but which receive its truths and goods from the Lord; from far, and from the end of the earth, signifying those who are out of the church, earth denoting the church, sons those who receive truths, and daughters those who receive goods; these are said to be created, formed and made for glory. Glory is the Divine truth which they receive. [4] In David:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a firm spirit in the midst of me” (Ps. li. 10).

To create a clean heart signifies to reform as to the good of love; to renew a firm spirit in the midst of me, signifies to reform as to the truth of faith; for heart signifies the good of love, and spirit a life according to Divine truth, which is the faith of truth.

[5] Again:

“Wherefore hast thou created the sons of man in vain? Lord, where are thy former mercies?” (Ps. lxxxix. 47, 49).

To create the sons of man signifies to reform by means of Divine truth; the sons of man are all those who are in Divine truths, thus in the abstract Divine truths themselves. [6] Again:

“The nations shall fear the name of Jehovah, and all the kings of the earth thy glory, because Jehovah hath built up Zion; it shall be written for the generation to come; and the people which shall be created shall praise Jah” (Ps. cii. 15, 16, 18).

This passage treats of reformation. By the nations which shall fear the name of Jehovah are meant those who are in good; and by the kings of the earth, those who are in truths from good. By building Zion is signified to establish the church, Zion denoting the church; by the people which shall be created and shall praise Jah, are signified all those who are reformed. [7] Again:

“Thou givest to them, they gather; thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the faces of the earth” (Ps. civ. 28, 30).

That to create here denotes to reform is evident; for by giving, and their gathering is signified that they receive the truths which are given by the Lord. By thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good is signified that they receive the good that flows from the Lord; by thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created, is signified that they are reformed as to life according to Divine truth; and by thou renewest the faces of the earth, is signified the establishment of the church.

[8] In Isaiah:

“Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number; he calleth them all by name; God from eternity; Jehovah, the creator of the ends of the earth, is not weary” (xl. 26, 28).

Here also reformation is treated of, which is signified by creating; by the host which Jehovah bringeth out are signified all truths and goods; by calling them all by name is signified reception according to the quality of every one; by creating the ends of the earth is signified the establishment of the church, thus the reformation of those who are therein. [9] In Ezekiel:

“Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God, every precious stone was thy covering, in the days in which thou wast created, they were prepared. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day in which thou wast created, until perversity was found in thee” (xxviii. 13, 15).

These things are spoken of the king of Tyre, by whom are signified those who are in truths and thence in good; concerning whom it is said that they had been in the garden of God, and that every precious stone was their covering. By the garden of God is signified intelligence, and by the precious stones which are also named in the passage are signified the knowledges (cognitiones) of truth and good; these are called a covering, became they are in the natural man, and the natural man covers the spiritual. These are said to have been prepared in the day in which they were created, that is in the day in which they were reformed: hence it is evident what is meant by thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created.

[10] In Isaiah:

“Jehovah will create upon every dwelling of Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud by day and the shining of a flame of fire by night; for upon all the glory shall be a covering” (iv. 5).

By Zion is signified the church as to the Word; the internal or spiritual sense of the Word, as to good, is meant by the dwelling thereof; the external or literal sense, as to truths, is meant by the cloud by day, and as to good, by the shining of a flame of fire by night. This sense, because it covers, and is the repository of, the spiritual sense, is called a covering upon all the glory, glory denoting the spiritual sense; these are also said to be created, because they are the truths of heaven and the church. [11] In Malachi:

“Hath not one God created us? wherefore do we act perfidiously?” (ii. 10).

Because by created us is signified reformed, that they might be a church, it is therefore said, “wherefore do we act perfidiously?”

[12] In Isaiah:

“Thus saith God, Jehovah, he that createth the heavens, and stretcheth them out; he that spreadeth forth the earth, giveth breath to the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein” (xlii. 5).

By creating the heavens and stretching them out, and by spreading forth the earth, is signified to reform; by the heavens are signified both the heavens and the internals of the church – the internals of the church also are heavens with those who are in them; the earth signifies the externals of the church, which are said to be spread forth when truths from good are multiplied: that reformation by truths is hereby signified is evident, for it is said, “he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein.”

[13] In the same:

“Jehovah, creating the heavens, forming the earth and making it. He hath not created it an emptiness, he formed it to be inhabited” (xlv. 12, 18).

By heavens and by earth, and by creating, are signified similar things as in the passage adduced above. By not creating it an emptiness is signified that it is not without truth and good, in which they are who are reformed; the lack of these is emptiness. By he hath formed it to be inhabited, is signified that they should live according to good and truth, and from them; for to inhabit signifies to live. [14] Again:

“Behold, I create a new heaven and a new earth. Be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create; for, behold, I am about to create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people gladness” (lxv. 17, 18).

By creating a new heaven and a new earth are not meant the visible heaven and the habitable earth, but a new church, internal and external, heaven denoting the internal of the church, and earth its external (what the internal of the church is, and what the external, may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, n. 246); therefore it is said, “behold, I am about to create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people gladness.” Jerusalem is the church, rejoicing its delight from good, and gladness its delight from truth. Similar things are signified by the new heavens and the new earth in the same prophet (lxvi. 22), and by the new heaven and the new earth in the Apocalypse (xxi. 1). [15] And similarly by the things in the first chapter of Genesis:

“In the beginning Jehovah created the heaven and the earth; and the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the faces of the abyss. And the spirit of God moved upon the faces of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God created man into his own image, into the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (i. 1-3, 27).

This passage treats of the establishment of the first church on this earth; the reformation of the members of that church, as to their internal, and as to their external state, is meant by the creation of the heaven and the earth. That there was no church before, because men were without good and without truth, is signified by the earth being void and empty; and that they were then in dense ignorance and also in falsities, is signified by the darkness upon the faces of the abyss; their first enlightenment is signified by the spirit of God moving upon the faces of the waters, and by God saying, “Let there be light, and there was light.” By the spirit of God is signified Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, and by moving upon the faces of the waters is signified enlightenment; the same is signified by light; and by there was light is signified the reception of Divine truth. That God created man into His own image signifies that he was in the love of good and truth, and corresponded to heaven as its likeness. For the love of good and truth is an image of God, and hence also the angelic heaven is an image of God; therefore, in the sight of the Lord, it is as one man (as may be seen in the work, Heaven and Hell, n. 59-67, 68-72, 73-77, 78-86, 87-102). That He created them male and female signifies that He reformed them as to truth and as to good; male, in the Word, denotes truth, and female denotes good. From these considerations it is evident that it is not the creation of heaven and earth, but the new creation and reformation of those who composed the first church, which is described in this chapter and in the following chapters; and that similar things are there meant by the creation of heaven and earth as by the creation of the new heaven and new earth in the passages above adduced.

[16] That creation in the Word signifies reformation and the establishment of the church, which is effected by the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord is also evident from these words in John:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory” (i. 1-5, 9, 10, 14).

By the Word is here meant the Lord as to Divine truth. That all things were created by the Divine truth is meant by these words, “all things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made”; also by these, “the world was made by him.” And since by the Word is meant the Lord as to Divine truth, it is therefore said, “in him was life, and the life was the light of men; that was the true light”; light signifying Divine truth, and life all intelligence and wisdom therefrom; for this constitutes man’s essential life, and life eternal is according to it. The presence of the Lord as Divine truth, with every one, from which come life and light, is meant by the light shining in darkness and enlightening every man that cometh into the world; but that those who are in the falsities of evil do not perceive, consequently, do not receive that truth, is meant by the darkness not comprehending, and by the world knowing him not; for darkness signifies the falsities of evil. That it is the Lord as to the Divine Human who is here meant by the Word is clearly manifest, for it is said, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory,” glory also signifying Divine truth. (That all things were created by means of Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, which is here meant by the Word, may be seen in the work, Heaven and Hell, n. 137, 139; and in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, n. 263). Hence also it is clear that to make or create here also signifies to make man new or to reform him; for here, as in the book of Genesis, mention is immediately made of light. (That by light is signified that proceeding Divine truth whereby all are reformed, may be seen in the work, Heaven and Hell, n. 126-140, and in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, n. 49).