In some ways, this verse expresses the pinnacle of human existence, the most beautiful, joyous state we have ever experienced: people at their purest and most loving living in a state of love and wisdom given them by the Lord.

This happened thousands of years ago, before the beginning of recorded history, in what the Writings call the Most Ancient Church, represented here by "man." A garden represents the intellect and Eden represents love, so the man in the Garden of Eden represents people pure of heart in a state of love to the Lord and the wisdom that comes from that love.

It's interesting that the man is to "dress" the garden ("serve" would be a more literal translation) and "keep" it. "Serving" in the Bible generally represents a more external spiritual state serving a more exalted one. "Keeping" means expressing higher spiritual things through lower ones, including external forms of worship. It seems, then, that the people of the Most Ancient Church were to serve the love in the garden and express the wisdom coming from that love.

The Writings also say directly that this means the love and the wisdom were not their own, but were from the Lord, and that they knew it to be true.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 122, 123, 124)

6311. As has been stated, it is by that inferior light that hell sees, and it is by that light too that some people who are not so wicked see, that is to say, people who have not been avaricious, adulterers, or mere pleasure-seekers, but who have come to see by that light because they have not cultivated the rational degree of their mind. I have been allowed to see those spirits living in a kind of twilight. I saw them in a market-place, crowds of them, where they were bringing sacks containing raw materials; they were weighing them and carrying them away. Some sirens were not far away at that time, and I heard them saying that they wanted to be there because they could see people with their own eyes. For since sirens more than any others have been given to adultery and have also been opposed to everything celestial or spiritual, they are unable to see any other spirits except those who see by the inferior light of the senses. For the sirens themselves see by that kind of light.