33. Everyone is capable of knowing very well that no life is possible without love of some kind, nor any type of joy whatsoever except the joy that flows out from the love. Furthermore the nature of the love determines the nature of the life and of the joy. If you took away your loves, and what amounts to the same, your desires (since these stem from love), thought would instantly perish and you would be as one dead. This I have been shown convincingly. Self-love and the love of the world present a semblance of life and of joy, but because they are absolutely contrary to true love, which is loving the Lord above all things and the neighbour as oneself, it is clear that neither of them is love but hatred. For the more anyone loves himself and the world, the more he hates his neighbour and so the Lord. Consequently true love is love to the Lord, true life is the life inherent in love from Him, and true joy is the joy of that life. The existence of more than one true love is not possible. Nor consequently is the existence of more than one true life possible which is the source of all true joy and happiness, such as angels in the heavens enjoy.

5686. 'His brother, his mother's son' means the internal born from the natural as its mother. This is clear from the representation of Benjamin, to whom 'brother' and 'mother's son' refer here, as the internal, dealt with in 5469. And since this is the intermediary it comes into being from the celestial of the spiritual, represented by 'Joseph', as its father, and from the natural as its mother; for it must have its beginning in both these if it is to serve as an intermediary. So this is what is meant by the internal born from the natural as its mother. Also because the celestial of the spiritual, which is 'Joseph', had come into being in a similar way from the natural as its mother, but from the Divine as its father, 'Benjamin' is therefore called, as he was in actual fact by birth, 'his brother, his mother's son'; and in what immediately follows he is also addressed as 'son'. The name 'brother' is used by the Lord, who is meant here in the highest sense by 'Joseph', to refer to everyone who has any good of charity which he has received from the Lord. He is also referred to as 'his mother's son', but in this case 'mother' is used to mean the Church.