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.

5339. 'And in the seven years of abundance of corn the land yielded bunches' means initial states when series of truths were multiplied. This is clear from the meaning of 'seven years' as initial states (for seven years in which there was an abundance of corn came first, followed by seven years in which there was famine - 'years' meaning states, see 482, 487, 488, 493, 893); from the meaning of 'an abundance of corn' as a multiplication of truth, dealt with in 5276, 5280, 5292 ('the land yielded' meaning that this multiplication took place in the natural - 'the land' here being the natural, as immediately above in 5338); and from the meaning of 'bunches' as series.

The role which the series meant by 'bunches' play is this: With a person who is undergoing reformation general truths are introduced first, then the particular aspects of those general truths, and after that the specific details of these particular aspects. Particular aspects are ranged in order beneath general truths, and specific details beneath particular aspects, 2384, 3057, 4269, 4325 (end), 4329 (middle), 4345, 4383, 5208.

[2] These arrays or ordered arrangements of truths are meant in the Word by bundles, which at this point are called handfuls or 'bunches'. They are nothing else than truths which have been multiplied and are then arrayed in or arranged into series. With people who are regenerate these series follow the same ordered patterns as those in which the communities in heaven exist; but in the case of those who are not regenerate and are incapable of becoming such they follow the patterns in which the communities in hell exist. Consequently a person who is governed by evil, and by falsity rooted in evil, is a miniature hell, whereas one who is governed by good, and by truth rooted in good, is a miniature heaven. But more, in the Lord's Divine mercy, will be stated elsewhere about these series.