50. The sense-oriented people mentioned in the teachings in §45 above, who are the lowest of the earthly. The sensory level is the outermost limit of our life, attached to and embedded in our bodies: 5077, 5767, 9212, 9216, 9331, 9730. We call people sense-oriented who pass final judgment on everything on the basis of their physical senses and who do not believe in anything unless they can see it with their own eyes and touch it with their own hands, saying that only such a thing actually is something and rejecting everything else: 5094, 7693. People like this think on the outermost level and not more deeply within themselves: 5089, 5094, 6564, 7693. Their deeper levels are closed so that they do not see any bit of truth there: 6564, 6844, 6845. In short, they are in a crude earthly light and perceive nothing in heaven's light: 6201, 6310, 6564, 6598, 6844, 6845, 6612, 6614, 6622, 6624. They are therefore inwardly opposed to everything having to do with heaven and the church: 6201, 6316, 6844, 6845, 6948, 6949. Scholars who are adamantly opposed to the truths of the church are sense-oriented: 6316.

[2] Sense-oriented people are able to dispute with cleverness and with vehement certainty because their thinking is closely enmeshed with their speaking, and because, as they see it, intelligence in its entirety consists of words assembled solely out of facts recalled from the memory: 195, 196, 5700, 10236. The reasons they offer in their disputes, however, are based on deceptive sense impressions, which they use to ensnare ordinary people: 5084, 6948, 6949, 7693.

[3] Sense-oriented people are more shrewd and vicious than others: 7693, 10236. Misers, adulterers, hedonists, and deceivers are especially sense-oriented: 6310. Their deeper levels are befouled and filthy: 6201. They are in touch with hell through those levels: 6310. The people in the hells are sense-oriented, more and more so the deeper in hell they are: 4623, 6311. The aura of hellish spirits is joined to our sensory level from behind us: 6312. The ancients called people who reason on the basis of their senses and therefore against the truths that belong to religious faith "serpents of the tree of knowledge": 195, 196, 197, 6398, 6949, 10313.

[4] Further description of our sensory level and sense-oriented people (10236) and of the extension of our senses (9731).

[5] [Thoughts and desires] based on our senses should be put last, not first. In the wise and intelligent they are put last and are subject to the inner self. In those who are not wise, though, they are put first and are in control. These are the people who are properly called "sense-oriented": 5077, 5125, 5128, 7645. If a sensory perspective is put last and is subject to our inner self, a path to the understanding is opened through it and truths are refined from it by means of a kind of distillation: 5580.

[6] Our sensory functions are most directly exposed to the world; they let in things that enter from the world and filter them: 9726. Through these sensory functions our outer or earthly self is in touch with the world; through rational faculties it is in touch with heaven: 4009. In this way our sensory functions provide things that are useful to our deeper functions: 5077, 5081. Some of our senses support our understanding and others support our will: 5077.

[7] Unless our thinking is lifted out of sensory concerns we have little wisdom: 5089. Wise people think on a level higher than that of the senses: 5089, 5094. When our thinking rises above sensory concerns we come into a clearer light and eventually into a heavenly light: 6183, 6313, 6315, 9407, 9730, 9922. The ancients knew that it was desirable to rise above sensory concerns and be released from them: 6313. In our spirit we can see things that are in the spiritual world if we can be released from the sensory concerns that arise from our bodies and be lifted into heaven's light by the Lord: 4622. This is because it is not the body that is conscious but the spirit within the body, and to the extent that it is in the body the spirit's consciousness is coarse and cloudy and therefore in darkness. To the extent that it is not in the body, the spirit's consciousness is clear and is in the light: 4622, 6614, 6622.

Facts derived from the senses are the lowest level of our understanding, and sensory gratification is the lowest level of our will: 9996 (which includes discussion). The difference between the sensory functions we have in common with animals and the sensory functions we do not have in common with them: 10236. There are sense-oriented people who are not evil because their deeper levels are not completely closed. On their state in the other life: 6311.

5700. 'And for the Egyptians eating with him by themselves' means the separation of factual knowledge existing in an inverted state of order. This is clear from the representation of 'the Egyptians' as factual knowledge present in an inverted state of order, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'eating with him by themselves' as a separation, dealt with immediately above in 5699. 'The Egyptians eating with him' means Egyptians who were eating at Joseph's house; yet it is evident that they did not do so with Joseph since it says that they ate 'by themselves'. In the good sense facts known to the Church are meant by 'Egypt' or 'the Egyptians', see 1462, 4749, 4964, 4966; but in the contrary sense facts existing in an inverted state of order, and so ideas contrary to the truths known to the Church are meant by them, 1164, 1165, 1186. And many places in the Word contain some reference to Egypt in this contrary sense. The reason why 'Egypt' means those facts existing in an inverted state of order is that the facts known to the Ancient Church which were the representatives and meaningful signs of celestial and spiritual realities, and which were fostered among those people more than others, were converted by them into magic. Consequently the facts known to the representative Church were brought by them into a completely inverted state of order.

[2] Facts are said to exist in an inverted state of order when people intent on doing what is evil violate heavenly order; for heavenly order intends that good should be done to everyone. The result of this therefore is that once people cause heavenly order to become inverted in this way they ultimately reject what is of God, what is of heaven, and consequently what constitutes charity and faith. People who have come to be like this know how to use factual knowledge to engage in keen and skillful reasoning; for their use of reason relies on sensory evidence, and reasoning reliant on sensory evidence relies on considerations of an external nature - on bodily and worldly matters which instantly absorb a person's thoughts and feelings. Unless such factual knowledge has had the light of heaven shed upon it and has thereby been brought into a completely different state of order, it sets the person in obscurity. This obscurity is so pronounced, so far as heavenly matters are concerned, that he not only fails to understand them but also utterly refuses to accept them, and at length casts them aside and, so far as he is allowed to do so, says blasphemous things about them. When factual knowledge exists in a proper state of order it has been arranged by the Lord into the same form as heaven takes. But when it exists in an inverted state of order it has been arranged into the form hell takes, a form in which the worst falsities are in the centre, supporting ideas come next, and truths on the outside. And as those truths are on the outside they cannot have any communication with heaven where truths are predominant. For this reason the interiors are closed, since it is through those interiors that the way to heaven lies open.