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)

7693. 'In the whole land of Egypt' means on every side in the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'the land of Egypt' as the natural mind, and so the natural, dealt with in 7674. Since 'the locust', which has been the subject here, means falsity in the outermost parts, that is, in the sensory level of the human mind, let me say what the sensory level is in order that people may thereby know what falsity in the outermost parts of the mind is. A sensory-minded person, or a person whose thought and actions are reduced to the sensory level, is one who does not believe anything unless it is palpable to his outward senses, and who is led solely by bodily appetites, pleasure-seeking desires, and covetous passions, and not by rational ways of thinking. Ideas that lend support to urges such as these are what he believes to be rational ways of thinking. Being like this a sensory-minded person denies the existence of everything of an internal nature, until at length he will not even allow it to be mentioned. Consequently he refuses in his heart to believe in anything whatever of heaven. He does not have any belief in life after death, because he considers life to reside solely in the body. He therefore also supposes that when he dies it will be the same for him as for an animal. That person thinks so to speak on the surface, that is, on the lowest or outermost levels, and he is totally unaware of the existence of interior thought that is dependent on the perception of what is true and good. The reason why he is not aware of this, nor even of the existence of an internal man, is that the inner parts of his mind look down towards things of the world, the body, and the earth, and make one with them. They have therefore been diverted from looking upwards or towards heaven, for they are turned in the opposite direction. Looking upwards or towards heaven does not consist in thinking about the things of heaven but in having them as one's end in view, that is, loving them above all else. For in whatever direction love turns, the inner parts of a person's mind turn, and so too his thought. All this goes to show the nature of the sensory level of a person's mind, or the natural in its outermost parts, for a person who thinks on the sensory level is called sensory-minded.