354. Come and see. That this signifies attention and perception, is clear from the signification of coming when anything is made visible, as denoting to attend; for by coming, in the spiritual sense, is meant to draw near with the sight, thus to attend; all attention also is from the presence of the sight in the object; and from the signification of beholding, as denoting perception, for by seeing in the Word is signified to understand (as may be seen above, n. 11, 260); here to perceive, because out of the inmost heaven; for what comes out of the inmost heaven, is perceived; but what comes out of the middle heaven, is understood. The reason is, that the inmost heaven is in the good of love, but the middle heaven is in the truths therefrom, and all perception is from good, and all understanding from truths. (Concerning this fact see above, n. 307; what perception is may be seen in the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 140.)

140. Perception.

Perception is seeing what is true and good by means of an inflow from the Lord: 202, 895, 7680, 9128. Perception is found only in people who have a love for the Lord that comes from the Lord and who devote their lives to doing good: 202, 371, 1442, 5228. Perception is found in those in heaven who, while they were living in this world, took the church's teachings from the Word and immediately put them into action in their daily lives instead of first storing them away in their memory. Therefore the deeper levels of their minds were formed to accept inflow from the Divine, with the result that in heaven their understanding is continually coming into greater and greater enlightenment: 104, 495, 503, 521, 536, 1616, 5145. They know countless things and are immensely wise: 2718, 9543. People who have perception do not resort to logical argumentation to identify the truths that belong to religious faith, and if they were to use that sort of argumentation, they would lose their perceptiveness: 586, 1385, 5937. If we believe that we are wise and knowledgeable on our own, we cannot have perception: 1386. Scholars have no idea what this kind of perception is: 1387 (which includes evidence from eyewitness experience).

The people who are in the Lord's heavenly kingdom have perception, but the people who are in the spiritual kingdom do not have perception; instead, they have conscience: 805, 2144, 2145, 8081. The people of the Lord's heavenly kingdom do not base their thinking on faith the way the people of the Lord's spiritual kingdom do, because the people of the heavenly kingdom receive from the Lord the ability to perceive everything belonging to faith: 202, 597, 607, 784, 1121, 1387, 1398, 1442, 1919, 7877, 8780. As a result, all that the heavenly angels say about the truths that belong to religious faith is "Yes, yes," or "No, no," because they perceive and see them; but spiritual angels have to use their reason to determine whether the truths taught by their religious faith are actually true or not: 2715, 3246, 4448, 9166, 10786 (these passages explain the Lord's words "Let your communication be ‘Yes, yes; no, no. ' Whatever is more than these comes from evil" [Matthew 5:37]). Because heavenly angels have this higher perception that allows them to recognize which truths to believe, they do not even like to say the word "faith": 202, 337. The difference between heavenly angels spiritual angels: 2088, 2669, 2708, 2715, 3235, 3240, 4788, 8521, 9277, 10295. On the perception of the people of the earliest church, which was a heavenly church: 125, 597, 607, 784, 895, 1121, 5121.

There are deeper and shallower levels of perception: 2145, 2171, 2831, 5920. Sometimes people in this world have a perception of what is upright and equitable; they rarely have a perception of what is spiritually good or true: 2831, 5937, 7977. The light of perception is radically different from the light of conviction; the light of conviction may seem like perception to some people, but in fact it is not: 8521, 8780.