39. Verse 20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things, living creatures; and let birds fly above the earth, upon the face ¹ of the expanse of the heavens.

After the great lights have been kindled and lodged in the internal man, from which the external man receives its light, a person starts to live for the first time. Till then he can hardly be said to have lived, for he had imagined that the good he had done he had done from himself, and the truth he had uttered he had spoken from himself. And since man functioning from himself is dead - there being nothing in him that is not evil and false - therefore whatever he brings forth from himself is not living. So true is this that of himself he is incapable of doing any good deed that is in itself good. The fact that man cannot begin to think about good or to will it, and so cannot do good, unless the Lord is the source, is clear to everyone from the doctrine of faith, for the Lord says in Matthew,

He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. Matthew 13:37.

Nor can good come from anywhere else than the one fount itself of all good, as yet again He says,

Nobody is good but one, God. Luke 18:19.

[2] Nevertheless when the Lord is revitalizing a person, or regenerating him, He does allow him, to begin with, to imagine that good and truth originate in himself, for at that point a person cannot grasp anything else, or be led to believe and finally perceive, that all good and truth come from the Lord alone. As long as he held the former opinion his truths and goods were comparable to 'a tender plant', then 'a plant bearing seed', and after that 'a fruit tree', which are inanimate. But once he has been brought to life by love and faith and believes that the Lord is at work in every good deed he does and in every truth he utters, he is compared first to creeping things from the water and to birds which fly above the earth, and then to beasts, all of which are animate and are called 'living creatures'.

Footnotes:

6600. I have been shown quite plainly that a person's thought, also that of spirits, and of angels too, radiates into numerous communities in the spiritual world, but that the thought of one person does so in a different manner from that of another. So that I might have sure knowledge of this I have been allowed to talk to some of the communities to which my own thought has penetrated. And from this I have been able to know what was flowing into my thought and which community it came from as well as the location and the essential nature of that community, and to know all this in such a way that I could not be mistaken. The extension of the thoughts and affections of man, spirit, or angel into different communities is what determines how much ability he has to understand and perceive.

[2] How amply the thoughts and affections of a person in whom the good of charity and of faith are present extend into the communities of heaven depends on the degree to which those forms of good, and also genuine good resides with him; for all these kinds of good are in harmony with heaven and therefore flow spontaneously far and wide into it. There are nevertheless some communities into which an affection for truth, and others into which an affection for good reaches. An affection for truth reaches communities consisting of spiritual angels, and an affection for good reaches communities consisting of celestial angels. But on the other hand the thought and affection of those who are under the influence of evil and falsity extend into hellish communities; how far they extend likewise depends on the degree to which evil and falsity reside with them.

[3] It has been stated that the thought and affection of man, spirit, and angel radiate into communities round about, and that understanding and perception arise from this. But it should be recognized that this was a statement only of what seems to happen, since no inflow of thoughts and affections takes place into those communities, only from them, and indeed by Way of the angels and spirits present with a person. For as has been shown at the ends of previous chapters, all influx takes place from what is more internal; thus among the good it is an influx from heaven, that is, from the Lord by way of heaven, and among the evil it is an influx from hell.