5786. 'behold, we are my lord's slaves' means that they are to be deprived for ever of their own freedom. This is clear from the meaning of slaves' as being without any freedom of their own, dealt with in 5760, 5763. What is meant by being deprived of the freedom of one's own has also been stated in the paragraphs that have just been mentioned; however, since it is an extremely important matter, let it be restated. A person has both an external man and an internal man. The external man is the means through which the internal man acts; for the external man is merely the organ or instrument of the internal. This being so, the external man must be made wholly subservient and subject to the internal; and when the external man is subject to the internal, heaven acts on the external man by means of the internal man and makes the external man conform to things such as are of heaven.

[2] The opposite occurs when the external man is not the servant but the master. The external man is the master when a person has the pleasure of the body and the senses as his end in view, especially when the objects of his selfish and worldly love and not the things of heaven are his end - to have as his end in view being to love one and not the other. For when a person has those objects as his end he no longer believes that there is any such thing as an internal man or that within himself there is anything that will be living when his body dies. In his case the internal, since it does not hold the position of the master, is merely the servant of the external, employed to enable thought and reasoning against what is good and true to take place; for in this person's case no other kind of influx by way of the internal is available. This is also the reason why people like this utterly despise, indeed recoil from the things of heaven. From all this it is plain that the external man, which is the same as the natural man, ought to be wholly subject to the internal or spiritual man, and consequently should exist without any freedom of its own.

[3] Freedom of one's own consists in giving oneself up to every kind of base pleasure, despising others in comparison with oneself, and making them subject like slaves to oneself. Or else it consists in persecuting others, hating them, being delighted when bad things happen to them - especially things done to them by one's own designs or by the use of deceit - and wishing to see them dead. These are the kinds of things that come from indulging one's own freedom. From this one may see what a person is like when he exercises this type of freedom, namely a devil in human form. But when he loses this freedom he receives a heavenly freedom from the Lord, the nature of which is completely unknown to those exercising the freedom of their own. They imagine that if the freedom of their own were taken away from them no life at all would remain. But in actual fact this is when true life has its beginning and when true delight, blessing, happiness, and wisdom arrive, because this freedom comes from the Lord.

5763. 'He with whom it is found will be my slave' means that the one with whom that thing is present will forever be without his freedom. This is clear from the meaning of 'slave' as being without one's freedom, as above in 5760. The implications of this are as follows: Joseph's cup made of silver, placed on Joseph's orders with Benjamin, means interior truth, 5736, 5747. Anyone in possession of interior truth knows that everything true and good comes from the Lord, also that all freedom of one's own or originating in a person himself is hellish freedom. For when a person is motivated by his own freedom to do or think something, he does and thinks nothing but evil. He is consequently the devil's slave, hell being the origin of all evil that flows in. He also has a feeling of delight in that freedom, because it fits in with the evil in which he is steeped and into which he was born. Consequently he needs to rid himself of the freedom which is his own and take on heavenly freedom instead, which consists in willing what is good and therefore doing what is good, and in desiring what is true and therefore thinking what is true. When a person receives this freedom he is the Lord's slave or servant, in which case he enjoys true freedom and is not in the slavery in which he had been previously and which seemed like freedom. This is what is meant by being forever without his own freedom. What the essence and origin of freedom are, see 2870, 2893; true freedom consists in being led by the Lord, 2890.