9371. THE INTERNAL SENSE.

Verses 1-2. And He said unto Moses, Come up unto Jehovah, thou and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and bow yourselves afar off; and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah; and they shall not come near; and the people shall not come up with him. “And He said unto Moses,” signifies that which concerns the Word in general; “come up unto Jehovah,” signifies conjunction with the Lord; “thou and Aaron,” signifies the Word in the internal sense and the external sense; “Nadab and Abihu,” signifies doctrine from both senses; “and seventy of the elders of Israel,” signifies the chief truths of the church which are of the Word, or of doctrine, and which agree with good; “and bow yourselves afar off,” signifies humiliation and adoration from the heart, and then the influx of the Lord; “and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah,” signifies the conjunction and presence of the Lord through the Word in general; “and they shall not come near,” signifies no separate conjunction and presence; “and the people shall not come up with him,” signifies no conjunction whatever with the external apart from the internal.

491. The same things are signified by “sons” and “daughters” in this chapter (verses 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 26, 30), but such as is the church, such are the “sons and daughters” that is, such are the goods and truths; the truths and goods here spoken of are such as were distinctly perceived, because they are predicated of the Most Ancient Church, the principal and parent of all the other and succeeding churches.

1977. To make me fully aware of the way that dreams flow in I was put to sleep and dreamt of a boat approaching that was laden with delicacies and savories of every kind. These were stowed away in the boat, out of sight. On deck stood two armed guards, as well as a third man who was the captain. The boat was passing by into a kind of arched dock; and with this I woke up and thought about the dream. At that point the angelic spirits in front and above me over to the right addressed me. They declared that they were the source of this dream. So that I would know for sure that they were the source of it I was brought into a state where I was so to speak both asleep and awake at one and the same time. In a similar way they introduced different things that were pleasing and delightful, for example, an unknown tiny creature which was transformed into an object with blackish and shining rays which shot into my left eye at a fantastic speed. They also presented human beings, and also small children variously adorned, and other things besides whose delightfulness was indescribable. I spoke to those angelic spirits about these things also. This took place not just once but on a number of occasions, and each time they taught me by word of mouth.

[2] Those in whom such dreams originate are angelic spirits at the entrance to the paradise gardens. They are commissioned also to keep watch over certain people who are asleep, to prevent them being molested during that time by evil spirits. They perform their task with very great delight, so much so that they vie with one another to be there, and they love to fill man with joys and delights such as they see within his affection and disposition. Those who have become angelic spirits are drawn from those who during their lifetime took delight in and loved in every way to make other people's lives delightful. When a person's hearing has been opened far enough he hears as from afar a sweet rhythmic sound like singing coming from these spirits. They declared that they did not know from where such things as these, and representatives so beautiful and delightful, came to them all in a moment; but they were told that they came from heaven. They belong to the province of the cerebellum, for the cerebellum, as I have learned, remains awake even during periods of sleep when the cerebrum is sleeping. This was the source of the dreams, together with the perception of what these meant, which members of the Most Ancient Church had. And from those people were derived most of the representatives and meaningful signs of the Ancients, beneath which things deeply hidden were manifested, 1122.