5077. 'The cupbearer of the king of Egypt' means among the things of the body which are subject to the understanding Part of the mind. This is clear from the meaning of 'the cupbearer' as the external or bodily senses that are subordinate or subject to the understanding part of the internal man, dealt with in what follows below; and from the meaning of 'the king of Egypt' as the natural man, dealt with below in 5079. Since the cupbearer and the baker are the subject of the narrative that follows and these mean the external senses belonging to the body, something must first be said about these. It is well known that the external or bodily senses are five in number - sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch - and also that these constitute the entire life of the body. For without those senses the body has no life at all, for which reason also when deprived of them it dies and becomes a corpse. The actual bodily part of the human being therefore is nothing else than a receiver of sensory impressions and consequently of the life resulting from these. The part played by the senses is the principal one and that by the body the instrumental. The instrumental without its principal which it is fitted to serve cannot even be called the body that a person carries around while living in the world; but the instrumental together with its principal, when they act as one, can be called such. The two together therefore constitute the body.

[2] A person's external senses are directly related to his internal ones, for they have been given to a person and placed within his body to serve his internal man while he is in the world and to exist subject to the sensory powers of that internal man. Consequently when a person's external senses begin to rule his internal ones he is done for. When this happens his internal sensory powers are regarded as no more than servants whose function is to reinforce whatever the external senses imperiously demand. When this is the state in which the external senses operate, order in their case has become turned around, a situation dealt with immediately above in 5076.

[3] A person's external senses are, as stated, directly related to his internal ones, in general to the understanding and to the will. Consequently some external senses are subject or subordinate to the understanding part of the human mind, others are subject to the will part. One sensory power specifically subject to the understanding is sight; another subject to the understanding, and after that to the will also, is hearing. Smell, and more especially taste, are subject to both simultaneously, while the power subject to the will is touch. Much evidence could be introduced to show that the external senses are subject to the understanding and the will, and also to show how they are subject; but it would take up too much space to carry the explanation so far. Something of what is involved may be recognized from what has been shown at the ends of preceding chapters about the correspondence of those senses.

[4] In addition it should be recognized that all truths that are called the truths of faith belong to the understanding part, and that all forms of good which are those of love and charity go with the will part. Consequently it is the function of the understanding to believe, acknowledge, know, and see truth - and good also. But the function of the will is to feel an affection for that truth and to love it; and whatever a person feels an affection for and loves is good. But how the understanding influences the will when truth passes into good, and how the will influences the understanding when it puts that good into effect, are matters for still deeper examination - In the Lord's Divine mercy those matters will be discussed at various points further on.

[5] The reason 'the cupbearer' means the senses subject or subordinate to the understanding Part of the internal man is that everything which serves as drink, or which is consumed as such, for example, wine, milk, or water, is related to truth, which feeds the understanding and so belongs to the understanding. Also, because the external or bodily senses play a ministering role, 'a cupbearer' therefore means those senses or what is perceived by them. For in general 'drinking' has reference to truths which feed the understanding, see 3069, 3071, 3168, 3772, 4017, 4018; the specific meaning of 'wine' is truth deriving from good, or faith from charity, 1071, 1798, while 'water' means truth, 680, 2702, 3058, 3424, 4976. From all this one may now see what 'the cupbearer' means.

363, 1. Love and wisdom, and the volition and discernment that come from them, constitute our very life. Hardly anyone knows what life is. When people think about it, it seems like something ethereal, something with no specific image. It seems like this because people do not know that only God is life and that his life is divine love and wisdom. We can see from this that the life in us is nothing else and that there is life in us to the extent that we accept it.

We know that warmth and light radiate from the sun and that everything in the universe is a recipient, growing warm and bright in proportion to its receptivity. The same holds true as well for the sun where the Lord is, whose radiating warmth is love and whose radiating light is wisdom, as explained in part 2. It is from these two emanations from the Lord as the sun, then, that life comes.

We can tell that life is love and wisdom from the Lord from the fact that we grow sluggish as love ebbs away from us and dull as wisdom ebbs away; and if they leave us completely, we are snuffed out.

There are many forms of love that have been given their own names because they are derivatives, such as desires, cravings, appetites, and their gratifications and delights. There are many forms of wisdom, too, like perception, reflection, memory, thought, and focus on a subject. Further, there are many forms that come from both love and wisdom, such as agreement, decision, and resolve to act, among others. All of these belong to both [love and wisdom], but they are assigned their names on the basis of what is dominant and nearer to hand.

Finally, our senses are derived from these two, our sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, with their own pleasures and satisfactions. The appearance is that our eye is seeing, but our discernment is seeing through our eye, which is why we ascribe sight to our discernment. The appearance is that our ear is hearing, but our discernment is hearing through our ear. This is why we speak of the attentiveness and listening that are actually functions of discernment as "hearing." The appearance is that our nostrils smell and that our tongue tastes, but discernment is smelling with its perceptiveness and is tasting as well; so we refer to perceptiveness as smelling and tasting, and so on. The wellsprings of all these functions are love and wisdom; we can therefore tell that these two constitute our life.

4018. 'In front of the flocks; and they came on heat as they came to drink' means even to the point of an intense desire in the affection for truth that a joining [to the goods and truths within the natural] might be effected. This is clear from the meaning of 'coming on heat as they came to drink' as an intense desire. The meaning of 'being on heat' as an intense desire is self-evident; and for the meaning of 'coming to drink' as the affection for truth, see immediately above in 4017. The reason why 'in front of the flocks' means that a joining to the truths and goods within the natural might be effected is that this phrase implies seeing and consequent arousal of affection, for this is the manner in which spiritual things are joined to a person. What is more, every implantation of truth or good in a person, as well as every joining of them to him, is effected by means of affection. The truths and goods which a person has learned but for which he has no affection do indeed enter the memory, but they are lodged there as insecurely as a feather on top of a wall which is blown off by the slightest puff of wind.

[2] As regards the things that enter the memory the position is this: Those for which there is no affection pass into the unlit parts of the memory when they enter it, whereas those for which there is affection pass into the light there. Things present in that light are seen and appear clearly and distinctly when any matter of a similar nature is brought up, but not so the things lying around in the unlit parts. Such is the effect that affection belonging to love has. From this it may be seen that all implanting of truth and joining of it to good is effected through affection; and the greater that affection, the stronger the tie joining the two together.

[3] The intense desire of the affection is in this case inmost affection. But truths are not capable of being implanted and joined to good except by means of affections for truth and good, which affections well up from charity towards the neighbour and love to the Lord as their sources. But evils and falsities are implanted by means of affections for evil and falsity, and these affections well up from self-love and love of the world as their sources. This being so, and the subject at this point in the internal sense being the joining of good and truth within the natural man, mention is therefore made here and in what follows of the flock being on heat when they came to drink, by which such considerations are meant.