71. It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Act in Freedom and in Accord with Reason

It is generally recognized that we have a freedom to think and intend whatever we wish but not a freedom to say whatever we think or to do whatever we wish. The freedom under discussion here, then, is freedom on the spiritual level and not freedom on the earthly level, except to the extent that the two coincide. Thinking and intending are spiritual, while speaking and acting are earthly.

There is a clear distinction between these kinds of freedom in us, since we can think things that we do not express and intend things that we do not act out; so we can see that the spiritual and the earthly in us are differentiated. As a result, we cannot cross the line from one to the other except by making a decision, a decision that can be compared to a door that has first to be unlocked and opened.

This door stands open, though, in people who think and intend rationally, in accord with the civil laws of the state and the moral laws of society. People like this say what they think and do what they wish. In contrast, the door is closed, so to speak, for people who think and intend things that are contrary to those laws. If we pay close attention to our intentions and the deeds they prompt, we will notice that there is this kind of decision between them, sometimes several times in a single conversation or a single undertaking.

I mention this at the outset so that the reader may know that "acting from freedom and in accord with reason" means thinking and intending freely, and then freely saying and doing what is in accord with reason.

444. On one occasion I spoke to someone who when he lived in the world believed that the spirit was undimensional. In making this assumption he refused to entertain any term which included dimensional connotations. I asked him what he now felt about himself, considering that he was a soul or spirit, who possessed sight, hearing, smell, a perfect sense of touch, desires, thought, insomuch that he supposed himself to be just as if still in the flesh. He was restricted to the ideas that he had had when thinking in this manner in the world, and said that the spirit was thought. But I was allowed to reply that having lived in the world, did he not know that bodily sight was impossible without an organ of sight, the eye? What then of inner sight, which is thought? Did this not possess some organic substance through which it functioned? At this point he admitted that during his lifetime he had been labouring under the delusion of supposing that the spirit was simply thought devoid of anything organic or dimensional. I went on to say that if the soul or spirit were simply thought, man had no need of so large a brain, seeing that the whole brain serves as the organ of the inner senses. If it were not so, the skull could be an empty hollow and thought could still play the part of the spirit within it. From this one consideration, as well as from the activity of the soul into the muscles causing so many movements, it ought to have been clear to him that the spirit was organic, that is, was organic substance. Once he had heard this he admitted his mistake and was amazed that he had been so stupid.