“The eyes are the windows of the soul.” That's a sentiment with roots somewhere in murky antiquity, but one that has become hopelessly cliché because it is both poetic and obviously true. We feel that if we can look in someone's eyes, we can truly know what they are inside. And it's not just the eyes; really it is the face as a whole that conveys this. As Swedenborg puts it, the face is “man's spiritual world presented in his natural world” (Heaven and Hell, No. 91). Our faces reveal our interior thoughts and feelings in myriad ways, which is why psychologists, poker players and criminal investigators spend so much time studying them. It makes sense, then, that people's faces in the Bible represent their interiors, the thoughts, loves and desires they hold most deeply. We turn our faces to the ground to show humility when we bow in worship; we turn them to the mountains when seeking inspiration; we turn them toward our enemies when we are ready to battle temptation. When things are hard, we need to “face facts,” or accept them internally. When the topic is the Lord's face, it represents the Lord's interiors, which are perfect love and perfect mercy. And when people turn away from the Lord and refuse his love, it is described as the Lord “hiding his face.”

(Odkazy: Heaven and Hell 91)

241. About very inward things, or the form of very inward things, ¹ which can never be broken through, but withstands every assault, and emerges ever firmer: differently from an inward form, and still more, from lower earthly forms

[Marginal Note: What the spiritual is without the heavenly: it is broken]

1.) I was in thought about forms and in fact about that of very inward things, which is the spiritual form. It is of such a nature that it withstands every assault.

The properties of that spiritual form are: that it can be reduced by anxieties and pressures into all possible, thus an infinite number, of forms; it can be attached to all forms whatsoever in a lower region, and really be hardly troubled by them at all (however much those inhabiting the lower realm may think it is [troubled], because they reason from self); ² and it becomes all the firmer, the more stress it comes under. Each one of an immeasurably great number comes together and unites for the protection of the other; for there is nothing in a community that is not protected by the individual, in fact most individual components - even up to an immeasurably great, indeed infinite number - and thus held fast forever, so that it can never be harmed.

And many of the things deduced logically from the stability of that form, may also be deduced in regard to its perfection. Collectively it protects the individual component, and every individual component joins together in support of the community; and it is a fact that the more this form yields, or is yielding, or in other words, the softer it is, the more firmly it stands - for then what is innermost, both universally and in the individual parts, which is its universal element, joins in, and so on, etc., etc.

[Marginal Note: And that there is nothing so irrational, that it is not traced back to something rational, thus which does not have a place in the immeasurably great number of finite elements, i.e. in the infinite - that is in God the Messiah.]

2.) These were my thoughts this morning on the subject of forms; and the angels of the very inward heaven, and of the innermost one, received [them] I believe, but as applied to heaven as a whole and the angels' modes of resistance, stability, patience, and other like qualities, which are spiritual and heavenly; and so they confirmed these things by a voice that reached me, saying they were amazed that such a thought had ever been able to come into a human mind. So when human minds know truths, then from the mercy of God the Messiah, this passes over to the very inward and the innermost heavens.

3.) It is entirely different in the case of falsities, even in natural science, for which the learned world today is so avidly grasping that hardly anyone knows what is true and what is good, either in matters of natural science or of morality - as a result of which, communication with the very inward, and thus with the innermost heaven, is being taken away.

When I was writing these things, [I noticed that] earthly words are not adequate, because they contain more of the earthly element in my mind than could be removed so as to reveal what is spiritual more clearly.

4.) However, it is a different matter when it comes to the inward form, ¹ which contains that earthly element that was bruised [cf. Gen. 3:15]: this form communicates so closely with the lower earthly forms, or forms that have become imperfect, that they can easily be broken - and the more earthly they are, the more easily. All its perpetuity comes from the very inward form, whose perpetuity in turn comes from the innermost, and thus from God the Messiah.

In fact, the spiritual element itself, without the innermost filling it up, so to speak, is broken. This I have learned in many ways, and indeed, by wonderful symbolic displays, as well as experiences. This is the spiritual element that dominates in man today and creates the impression of being more inward, when it is only inward. Therefore it is called thinking, but it is [mere] reasoning; for anything rational is accompanied by the true spiritual inwardly within it, and this in turn by the heavenly within it [cf. 209]. 1747, the 6th day of November (old calendar).

Poznámky pod čarou: