7408. 'And they gathered them into heaps [upon] heaps' means that those false reasonings were arranged into bundles in the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'being gathered into heaps [upon] heaps' as being arranged into bundles. Those reasonings are 'gathered into heaps' because all the contents of a person's mind have been arranged into series, and into bundles so to speak, and then into series within series, or bundles within bundles, see 5339, 5530, 5881. The fact that they are arranged in this kind of way is evident from the way that all things are arranged within the body. There fibres can be seen arranged into bundles, and glands into clusters. This arrangement exists everywhere within the body, and in a much more perfect manner with the more refined substances that are not visible to the naked eye. That bundling allows itself to be seen especially in the brain, in the two substances there, one of which is called cortical, the other medullary; and it exists no less with those more refined substances, and lastly the most refined, where the forms that receive them are the actual forms receptive of life.

[2] The fact that forms or substances are receptive of life may be recognized from every detail to be observed in living things. It may also be recognized that recipient forms or substances are arranged or structured in the most appropriate way for the inflow of life. If life were not received by substances, that is, forms, there could be no living thing in the natural world, nor any in the spiritual world. Series of extremely fine threads, resembling bundles, are what constitute those forms. They likewise are receptive of life, and within those forms undergo perfect modification. For modifications depend on the forms, that is, substances, in which they occur and from which they arise; for the substances or forms determine what the modifications shall be. The reason why the learned have come to envisage the things that constitute a person's life - the contents of his thought and will, for example - as entities without recipient substances or forms is that they have come to believe that life or the soul is either something flame-like or something air-like, and so the kind of thing that will be dispersed after death. This accounts for the insane notion of a large number of them that there is no life after death. From all this one may see how to understand the explanation that the false reasonings were arranged into bundles in the natural.

4269. 'And you shall also say, Behold, your servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the gift that is going in front of me, and after that I will see his face; perhaps he will accept me' means preparation for what follows; 'and the gift passed over in front of him' means being carried into effect; also 'he spent that night in the camp' means the things which follow. These meanings become clear from each individual word in the internal sense, which, it is evident, has to do with making preparation to gain a friendly reception. But each individual word cannot be explained intelligibly, for as long as the general aspects of something are not known the individual details of that same thing cannot install themselves where there is any light, only where total shade exists. General conceptions come first, and unless they do, individual details do not have anywhere to go. If they go where total shade exists they are not seen; if they go where falsities reign they are either rejected or smothered or perverted; and if they go where evils reign they are ridiculed. It is enough that those general aspects of truth are received, which are these: A person must be regenerated before he can enter the Lord's kingdom, John 3:3; before he undergoes regeneration truth seemingly occupies the first position and good the second, but when he does undergo it order becomes turned around and good comes to occupy the first position and truth the second; also when order is turned around the Lord deploys and arranges them into order within the natural or external man in such a way that truth is there received by good and truth submits itself to good, with the result that truth is no longer the basis of the person's action but good, that is, charity; also charity is the basis of his action when he leads a life in keeping with the truths of faith and loves what is taught for the sake of that life. The process by which these things are effected - things which have to do with the arrangement of truth into order, its introduction to good, and its submission in the presence of good, and which are the content of the internal sense here - can be seen by angels in clear light; for such matters belong to angelic wisdom, although man sees nothing of those matters. Nevertheless those who are governed by simple good arising out of simple faith have the capacity to know them. If they do not come to know them during the life of the body on account of worldly cares and resulting naive ideas, they do so in the next life when worldly and bodily concerns have been removed; for in that case they receive light and enter into angelic intelligence and wisdom.