Liver
'The liver,' as in Exodus 29:13, signifies interior purification, and 'the caul above the liver,' the inferior good of the external or natural self.
(Riferimenti: Arcana Coelestia 10031)
The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings #129
129. APART from a caring life, a pious life is useless, but with a caring life it makes a difference: 8252 and following. Outward holiness apart from inward holiness is not holy: 2190, 10177. What people in the other life are like who have lived lives of outward holiness, but not for reasons of inward holiness: 951, 952.
[2] There is an inner church and there is an outer church: 1098. There is inner worship and there is outer worship: 1083, 1098, 1100, 1151, 1153 (which include information about the nature of each kind of worship). What lies within our worship is what determines what kind of worship it is: 1175. Outward worship without inner worship is no worship at all: 1094, 7724. There is an inner dimension to our worship if our lives are lives of caring: 1100, 1151, 1153. We are engaged in true worship when we are devoted to love and caring-that is, when we are devoted to doing what is good in our daily lives: 1618, 7724, 10242. The nature of our worship depends on the nature of the good that we do: 2190. Real worship is living by the precepts of the church that are drawn from the Word: 7884, 10143, 10153, 10205, 10645.
[3] Real worship comes to us from the Lord; it does not originate in ourselves: 10203, 10299. The Lord wants worship from us for the sake of our salvation and not for the sake of his own glory: 4593, 8263, 10646. People believe that the Lord wants worship from us for the sake of his own glory. However, people who believe this do not know what divine glory is and that divine glory is the salvation of the human race. 1 We gain this salvation when we take no credit ourselves and when, through humility, we put aside our self-centeredness, because only then can anything divine flow into us: 4347, 4593, 5957, 7550, 8263, 10646. For us, heartfelt humility arises from our recognition of what we are: that we are nothing but evil and that on our own we are powerless; followed by our recognition of what the Lord is: that nothing but what is good comes from him and that he is all powerful: 2327, 3994, 7478. What is divine can flow only into a heart that is humble, because the more truly humble we are, the more distant we are from our self-centeredness and our love for ourselves: 3994, 4347, 5957. This means that the Lord wants us to have humility not for his sake but for ours, so that we can be in a state that is receptive to what is divine: 4347, 5957. Worship is not worship if it lacks humility: 2327, 2423, 8873. The nature of outward humility apart from inward humility: 5420, 9377. The nature of heartfelt, inward humility: 7478. There is no heartfelt humility in the evil: 7640.
[4] People who have no caring and no faith may have outward worship but they have no inward worship: 1200. If we are internally ruled by love for ourselves and love for the world, our outward worship has no inner reality no matter what it may look like from the outside: 1182, 10307, 10308, 10309. Outward worship that is a manifestation of inner self-love-the kind of worship that was characteristic of people of Babylon 2 -is profane: 1304, 1306, 1307, 1308, 1321, 1322, 1326. To pretend to have heavenly feelings in worship when we are actually devoted to evils that come from our self-love is a hellish thing to do: 10309.
[5] From what has been said and cited above about the inner self and the outer self you can see and determine what outward worship is like when it comes from inner worship and what it is like when it does not [§§36-53].
[6] As for what people are like who renounce the world and what people are like who do not renounce it, and how things turn out for them in the other life, this is discussed at some length in the book Heaven and Hell, particularly in two chapters: the one titled "Rich and Poor People in Heaven" (§§357-365), and the one titled "A Heaven-Bound Life" (§§528-535).
Note a piè di pagina:
1. For a discussion of two distinct meanings of the term "glory," see note 1 in New Jerusalem 185. Here Swedenborg draws on both meanings of "glory. " [LSW]
2. In the Book of Revelation, as interpreted by Swedenborg, the two ultimate evils are the desire for power and the confidence that we are saved by correct belief regardless of the quality of our lives. The first is represented by Babylon (see especially chapters 17-19) and the second by the dragon (see especially chapter 20). Swedenborg, like most Protestants of his day, associated the desire for power particularly with the claim of Roman Catholic clergy to have the power to forgive sins. On this association, see further at note 168. [GFD]
