Here we see the great lie people offered themselves, whispered from the seductive power of their senses to the vulnerable desire they had to live from themselves. What if the forbidden fruit -- applying their minds, their logic to the ultimate questions of faith – would actually unlock the door to all the secrets? What if it would let them decide right and wrong for themselves? What if it would make them like God? It is the same question that seduces so many today; because they love themselves so much, they turn their logic to proving that there is no God. And if there is no God, then they themselves are as gods, deciding about life in the power of their own minds.

In positive cases – such as when angels and people are called gods, or when the Lord is referred to as the God of gods – those gods represent true ideas that come to us from the Lord. In negative cases – such as when the people of Israel repeatedly adopt the gods of their neighbors – those gods represent false and twisted thinking that attacks what is good and true.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 204, 205, 206)

6310. A person's interiors are divided into separate degrees through derivation from one another; and in keeping with those degrees they also differ in the level of light they possess. The light on the internal sensory level next to the bodily senses is the dullest, a light that much experience has enabled me to recognize. I have also noticed that every time I have descended to this degree of light falsities and evils of many a kind have presented themselves, indeed even slanders against what is heavenly and Divine, not to mention things of a foul and disgusting nature. The reason why is that this kind of light prevails in hell, and hell enters a person by means of this light especially.

[2] When this is the kind of light a person has, his thought possesses virtually the same kind of light as his external sight, and takes place almost on the level of the body. People who see in this kind of light must be called sensory-minded, for their thought does not rise beyond sensory impressions received by the body. Such people do not have any perception of or belief in things that lie beyond the senses; they believe only what they can see and touch. This is the light that people see by who have not devoted any attention whatever to more internal things; in life they have neglected or treated with contempt everything of a rational or spiritual nature. It is the light that avaricious persons and adulterers in particular see by, also those who have led lives of mere pleasure-seeking or lives that have been disgustingly lazy. The thoughts of such people are consequently foul, and they often entertain disgraceful attitudes towards the holy things of the Church.