Heaven and Hell # 353
353. By false intelligence and wisdom we mean any intelligence and wisdom that is devoid of acknowledgment of the Divine. In fact, people who do not acknowledge the Divine Being but put nature in place of the Divine all think on the basis of their physical bodies. They are merely sense-centered, no matter how scholarly and learned they are considered in this world. 1 Their learning, though, does not rise any higher than the things in front of their eyes in this world, things that they keep in their memory and inspect almost physically. This is the case even though the very same branches of knowledge serve truly intelligent people as a means of forming their understanding. By "branches of knowledge" we mean the various experimental disciplines such as physics, astronomy, chemistry, mechanics, geometry, anatomy, psychology, philosophy, and political history, as well as the realms of literature and criticism and language study.
[2] There are church dignitaries who deny the Divine. They do not raise their thoughts any higher than the sensory concerns of the outer person. They look on the contents of the Word as no different from knowledge about anything else; they do not treat those contents as subjects of thought or of any thorough consideration by an enlightened rational mind. This is because their own deeper levels are closed off, and along with them, the more outward levels that are next to these deeper ones. The reason they are closed is that they have turned their backs on heaven and reversed the things that they could see there, things that are proper to the deeper levels of the human mind, as we have noted before. This is why they cannot see what is true and good - because these matters are in darkness for them, while what is false and evil is in the light.
[3] Nevertheless, sense-centered people can think logically, some of them actually with more skill and penetration than other people. However, they rely on deceptive sensory appearances bolstered by their own learning, and since they can think logically in this fashion, they think they are wiser than other people. 2 The fire that fuels their reasoning is the fire of love for themselves and the world.
These are the people who are devoted to false intelligence and wisdom, the ones meant by the Lord in Matthew: "Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand" (Matthew 13:13-15); and again, "Things are hidden from the intelligent and wise and revealed to children" (Matthew 11:25-26).
Poznámky pod čarou:
1. [Swedenborg's footnote] The sensory level is the outmost level of our life, attached to and embedded in our bodies: 5077, 5767, 9212, 9216, 9331, 9730. We call people sense-centered if they evaluate and decide about everything on the basis of their physical senses and do not believe anything unless they see it with their eyes and touch it with their hands: 5094, 7693. People like this do their thinking in their most external minds, and not more inwardly within themselves: 5089, 5094, 6564, 7693. Their deeper levels are closed, so that they can see nothing of divine truth: 6564, 6844-6845. In short, they are in a crude natural illumination and can see nothing that comes from heaven's light: 6201, 6310, 6564, 6844-6845, 6598, 6612, 6614, 6622, 6624. So they are profoundly opposed to whatever involves heaven and the church: 6201, 6316 [6310?], 6844-6845, 6948-6949. Scholars who have convinced themselves in opposition to the truths of the church are sense-centered: 6316. A description of the nature of sense-centered people: 10236.
2. [Swedenborg's footnote] The logical thinking of sense-centered people is both keen and skillful because they place all intelligence in talking from their physical memory: 195-196, 5700, 10236. However, all this relies on deceptive sensory appearances: 5084, 6948-6949, 7693. Sense-centered people are more canny and vicious than others: 7693, 10236. The ancients called people like this "serpents of the tree of knowledge": 195-197, 6398, 6949, 10313.
Arcana Coelestia # 6598
6598. INFLUX AND THE INTERACTION OF SOUL AND BODY - continued
It is well known that one person is endowed with a greater ability than another to understand and perceive what it is to behave honourably in private life, to be upright in public life, and to seek what is good in one's spiritual life. The reason why he has that greater ability lies in the fact that his thought has been raised towards the things of heaven and is consequently drawn away from the level of the external senses. For people whose thought does not rise above the level of the senses cannot begin to see what is honourable, upright, or good. They therefore rely on what others think, and base most of what they say on matters stored in the memory, and in doing this seem to themselves to be wiser than others. But those who can think on a level above the senses possess, if the contents of their memory are all in order, a greater ability than others to understand and perceive. Their ability depends on the height of the interior standpoint from which they look at things.
