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.

6564. 'For the evil with which they repaid you' means that they had become turned away from inflowing goodness and truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'the evil' as a turning away, dealt with in 5746. The fact that inflowing goodness and truth were what was turned away is meant by 'they repaid you'; for 'Joseph' is the celestial, or internal good, 5805, 5826, 5817, 5869, 5877, the channel through which goodness and truth flow in from the Lord. What influx by way of the internal entails is this: The Lord flows in constantly with goodness and truth through a person's internal. The goodness brings life and the heat to sustain it, which is the heat of love, while the truth brings a state of enlightenment and the light that maintains it, which is the light of faith. But with the evil, when that influx passes on into a person's exteriors, it is resisted and rejected, or perverted, or smothered. And to the extent that it is rejected, perverted, or smothered, the way to his interiors is blocked; only here and there does access to them lie open, as if through chinks round about. The ability to think and will therefore remains with the person, though only in opposition to what is true and good. That blockage to his interiors spreads further and further into his exteriors, the more wickedly he lives and the more convinced of falsity he consequently becomes. It spreads right down to the level of the senses, which then becomes the level on which he thinks. When this happens the desires and appetites of the senses remove all else. This is what the state of those in hell is like; for the evil who enter the next life are deprived of any ability to see what is honest and good for the sake of earning monetary gains, important positions, and reputation; then the senses are the level on which they function.