5127. 'According to the former manner' means in keeping with the law of order. This is clear from the meaning of 'the former manner' as the law of order. The law of order demands that exterior things should be subject to interior ones, or what amounts to the same, lower things should be subject to higher ones, serving them like domestic servants. Indeed exterior or lower things are nothing else than such servants, whereas interior or higher things in relation to them are their lords. The reason 'after the former manner' has this meaning is that as the cupbearer, being a servant, had previously served Pharaoh as his lord, in keeping with the law of subordination, so too was it in keeping with the law of order that the sensory power represented by 'the cupbearer' should serve the interior natural represented by 'Pharaoh'.

[2] The fact that the law of order requires lower or exterior things to serve higher or interior ones is totally unknown to a person governed by his senses. For anyone who relies solely on his senses has no knowledge of what is interior, nor thus of what is exterior in relation to this. He knows about his thought and speech, and about his will and action, and from this presumes that thought and will are interior, speech and action exterior. But he is not aware of the fact that thought based solely on sensory experience, and action based solely on natural impulses, belong to the external man, so that his thought and will are activities of his exterior man alone. He is particularly unaware of this when his thoughts are false thoughts and his desires evil desires. And since in the case of anyone like him communication with his interiors is closed he therefore has no idea of what interior thought is or what interior will is. If he is told that interior thought is based on truth and that interior will is based on doing what is good, he does not begin to understand it. He understands still less if he is told that the interior man is distinct and separate from the exterior - so distinct that the interior man can, from a higher position so to speak, see what is going on in the exterior man - and that the interior man has the ability and power to discipline the exterior, and the ability not to will or think what the exterior man sees as a result of his having false notions and longs for as a result of his having evil desires.

[3] As long as his external man is in control and reigning he sees none of this. But when not in this state, when for example he suffers any pain or grief owing to misfortune or sickness, he can see and grasp it because the external man ceases at that time to be in control. For a person's ability or power to understand is always preserved by the Lord, but it is largely obscured in the case of those steeped in falsities and evils, and is always more apparent as falsities and evils become dormant. The Lord's Divine is constantly coming to a person and bringing him light, but when falsities and evils are present, that is, things contrary to truths and forms of good, the light of the Divine is then either cast aside, smothered, or perverted. Just enough is received, through chinks so to speak, to allow him to think and to speak by the use of ideas received through the senses, and also to think and to speak about spiritual matters with the help of expressions registered in the natural or bodily memory.

9730. 'And you shall put it under the rim of the altar beneath' means that sensory perception on the last and lowest levels. This is clear from the meaning of 'a grating, a network', which was to be put under the rim of the altar, as the level of sensory perception, dealt with above in 9726; from the meaning of 'the rim', when it refers to sensory perception, as that which is last and lowest (external sensory perception forms for a person the last and lowest level of life, see 9726); and from the meaning of 'beneath' as outwardly, for by things that are higher those which are more internal are meant, and by things that are lower those which are more external are meant, 6952, 6954, 7814-7821, 8604, so that 'above' means inwardly and 'beneath' means outwardly. The words 'external sensory perception' are not used to mean the sensory powers of the body itself - its senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch - but the ability that depends directly on them. For a person is called sensory-minded if those bodily senses and their appetites govern what he thinks and desires and he looks no further. If he does look further to examine what the senses desire and what his senses lead him to think, he is said to be raised above the sensory level, or to be drawn away from it, and to think on a more internal level. This happens to those at the present day who are governed by the good of charity and faith; and when it happens, the sensory level becomes dormant and is deprived of the life and activity that the world and worldly objects stimulate there.

There are two directions in which the things composing a person's understanding and will can be oriented. One faces without, towards the world; the other faces within, towards heaven. With natural and sensory-minded people the things composing their understanding and will, that is, their thoughts and affections, are oriented towards the world; but with spiritual and heavenly-minded people their thoughts and affections are oriented towards heaven, and also alternately towards the world. When a person is being regenerated he pivots round to face within, and so far as he can be turned in that direction the person can be raised by the Lord towards heaven, to Himself, and can as a result be endowed with wisdom, faith, and love. For the person then leads his life on the level of the internal man, consequently on that of his spirit, and the external man is subordinate to the internal. But if a person does not allow himself to be regenerated all the thoughts and affections within him remain oriented towards the world, in which case he leads his life on the level of the external man, and the internal man is subordinate to the external, as happens when the external man produces reasonings that lend support to evil desires. These people are called natural-minded, and those who are interested only in the most external things are called sensory-minded. All this goes to show what anyone should understand by the level of sensory perception.