7408. 'And they gathered them into heaps [upon] heaps' means that those false reasonings were arranged into bundles in the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'being gathered into heaps [upon] heaps' as being arranged into bundles. Those reasonings are 'gathered into heaps' because all the contents of a person's mind have been arranged into series, and into bundles so to speak, and then into series within series, or bundles within bundles, see 5339, 5530, 5881. The fact that they are arranged in this kind of way is evident from the way that all things are arranged within the body. There fibres can be seen arranged into bundles, and glands into clusters. This arrangement exists everywhere within the body, and in a much more perfect manner with the more refined substances that are not visible to the naked eye. That bundling allows itself to be seen especially in the brain, in the two substances there, one of which is called cortical, the other medullary; and it exists no less with those more refined substances, and lastly the most refined, where the forms that receive them are the actual forms receptive of life.

[2] The fact that forms or substances are receptive of life may be recognized from every detail to be observed in living things. It may also be recognized that recipient forms or substances are arranged or structured in the most appropriate way for the inflow of life. If life were not received by substances, that is, forms, there could be no living thing in the natural world, nor any in the spiritual world. Series of extremely fine threads, resembling bundles, are what constitute those forms. They likewise are receptive of life, and within those forms undergo perfect modification. For modifications depend on the forms, that is, substances, in which they occur and from which they arise; for the substances or forms determine what the modifications shall be. The reason why the learned have come to envisage the things that constitute a person's life - the contents of his thought and will, for example - as entities without recipient substances or forms is that they have come to believe that life or the soul is either something flame-like or something air-like, and so the kind of thing that will be dispersed after death. This accounts for the insane notion of a large number of them that there is no life after death. From all this one may see how to understand the explanation that the false reasonings were arranged into bundles in the natural.

5881. 'For they were filled with dismay at his presence' means turmoil among them. This is clear from the meaning of 'being filled with dismay' as turmoil; dismay is nothing other than this. Turmoil is used to mean the rearrangement and reordering of truths within the natural, a reordering about which the following ought to be known: The order in which the factual knowledge and the truths in the human memory are arranged is not known by men; but angels know it, if the Lord so pleases. It is an amazing order - facts and truths are grouped together in bundles, as also are the actual bundles; and all this in keeping with the interconnection of things of which the person has gained a mental grasp. The way they are grouped together is more amazing than anyone can ever imagine. In the next life visual presentations of them sometimes appear; for in the light of heaven, which is a spiritual light, things such as these can be displayed for the eye to see in a way utterly impossible in the light of the world. The arrangement of the facts and truths into those bundle-like forms depends entirely on the person's loves. Self-love and love of the world leads to their being arranged into hellish forms, whereas love towards the neighbour and love to God leads to their being arranged into heavenly ones. Consequently when a person is being regenerated and the good of the internal man is becoming joined to the truths of the external man, turmoil develops among the truths; for they are being rearranged into a different order. This turmoil is what is being described here and is meant by their being filled with dismay. The dismay which comes to be felt at this time reveals itself through anxiety arising out of the change in the state immediately before; that is to say, it arises out of being deprived of the delight which had been present in that state. The same turmoil also reveals itself through anxiety over the life they had previously led, in that they had relegated internal good and the internal itself to the lowest parts of their minds - an anxiety dealt with in what follows.