4803. A matter wholly unknown in the world and worthy of mention is this: The states in which good spirits and angels live undergo constant change and perfection. In this way they are conveyed to the more internal parts of the province in which they dwell, and so into more excellent functions. For in heaven purification takes place constantly, which is so to speak a new creation. Yet the situation is that no angel to all eternity can possibly attain complete perfection. The Lord alone is the perfect One, He being the root and the source of all perfection. Those who correspond to the mouth constantly wish to be speaking, for speaking gives them utmost pleasure. While undergoing perfection they are restricted to speaking nothing but that which is beneficial to companions, the community, heaven, and the Lord. The delight they take in speaking in that way grows in the measure that the desire to regard themselves in what they speak and to strive after wisdom from what is properly their own passes away from them.

377. I am about to discuss the correspondence of the heart and the lungs with volition and discernment. Upon this rests the correspondence of everything in the body, called the members of the body as a whole, the sensory organs, and the body's viscera. Further, the correspondence of physical things with spiritual ones has not been recognized even though it was fully demonstrated in two works, one of which is Heaven and Hell and the other of which is on the spiritual meaning of the Word in Genesis and Exodus, titled Secrets of Heaven. For all these reasons, I should like now to point out the sections of these two works where I have written explanations of correspondence.

In Heaven and Hell, there is material on the correspondence of everything in heaven with everything in us, 87-102; and on the correspondence of everything in heaven with everything on earth, 103-115.

In the work on the spiritual meaning of the Word in Genesis and Exodus, titled Secrets of Heaven, there is material on the correspondence of the face and its expressions with the feelings of the mind: 1568, 2988, 2989, 3631, 4796, 4797, 4880 [4800], 5195 [5165], 5168, 5695, 9306;

on the correspondence of the body in its motions and actions with matters of discernment and volition: 2988, 3632, 4215;

on the correspondence of the senses in general: 4318-4330;

on the correspondence of the eyes and their sight: 4403-4420;

on the correspondence of the nostrils and smell: 4624-4634;

on the correspondence of the ears and hearing: 4652-4634 [4652-4659];

on the correspondence of the tongue and taste: 4791-4805;

on the correspondence of the hands, arms, legs, and feet: 4931-4953;

on the correspondence of the groin and the reproductive organs: 5050-5062;

on the correspondence of the inner viscera of the body, particularly the stomach, thymus, the cisterna, the chyle and its ducts and the mesentery: 5171-5180, 5189 [5181];

on the correspondence of the spleen: 9698;

on the correspondence of the peritoneum, kidneys, and bladder: 5377-5396 [5377-5391];

on the correspondence of the liver and the ducts of the liver, of the bladder, and of the pancreas: 5183-5185;

on the correspondence of the intestines: 5392-5395, 5379;

on the correspondence of the bones: 5560-5564;

on the correspondence of the skin: 5552-5573;

on the correspondence of heaven with a person: 911, 1900, 1982 [2162], 2996, 2998, 3624-3649, 3741-3745, 3884, 4091 [4041], 4279 [4280], 4423 [4323], 4524, 4525, 6013, 6057, 9279, 9632;

on the fact that everything in the physical world and its three kingdoms corresponds to something you can see in the spiritual world: 1632, 1881, 2758, 2890-2893 [2990-2993], 2897-3043 [2987-3003], 3213-3227, 3483, 3624-3649, 4044, 4053, 4156, 4366 [4936], 4939, 5116, 5377, 5428, 4477 [5477], 8211, 9280; that everything you see in heaven is a correspondence: 1521, 1532, 1619-1625, 1807, 1808, 1971, 1974, 1977, 1980, 1981, 2299, 2601, 3213-3226, 3348, 3350, 3457 [3475], 3485, 3748 [3747], 9481, 9570, 9576, 9577. The correspondence of the literal meaning of the Word with its spiritual meaning is dealt with throughout, and is also treated in Teachings for the New Jerusalem on Sacred Scripture 5-26, 27-69.

5477. 'And they did not know that Joseph was hearing' means that the natural light in which those truths dwell does not engender any belief that spiritual light renders all things visible. This is clear from the representation of 'the sons of Jacob who did not know' as the truths which the external Church possesses, and so are present in the natural, often dealt with already - from which comes the meaning that the natural light in which those truths dwell does not engender any belief; and from the representation of 'Joseph' as the celestial of the spiritual, which dwells in spiritual light. But this spiritual light renders truths in the natural visible, and this is meant by 'Joseph was hearing'; for 'hearing' means both obeying and discerning, 5017. Thus spiritual light renders truths in the natural visible; but natural light cannot do the same for truths in the spiritual.

[2] The situation with natural light and spiritual light is as follows. Natural light flows from the sun in the world, and spiritual light flows from the Sun in heaven, which is the Lord. All the truths of faith that a person has learned since early childhood come to be understood by him with the help of the kinds of objects, and the ideas formed from these, that originate in the light of the world. Thus every single thing is seen in a natural way; for as long as he lives in the world all the ideas constituting a person's thought are based on the kinds of things that exist in the world. If therefore these things are taken away from him his thought is totally destroyed. One who has not been regenerated has no knowledge at all of the existence of spiritual light, not even of the existence in heaven of a light that has nothing in common with the light of the world. Still less does that person know that spiritual light is what lights up ideas and objects that originate in the light of the world and is what enables a person to think, draw conclusions, and reflect on them. The reason such spiritual light enables him to do this is that that light is wisdom itself which goes forth from the Lord; and that wisdom manifests itself as the light which the angels in heaven see before them. That light renders visible every single thing beneath it, that is, every single thing present with a person which is a product of natural light. But the reverse does not happen unless the person has been regenerated, in which case the things that belong to heaven, that is, forms of goodness and truth, are lit up by spiritual light and become visible in the natural as if in a representative mirror.

[3] From this it is evident that the Lord, who is Light itself, sees every single thing present in a person's thought and will, and present indeed in the whole natural creation; nothing at all escapes His notice. From all this one may now recognize what is involved here - that natural light in which those truths dwell does not engender any belief that spiritual light renders all things visible, meant by the words 'they did not know that Joseph was hearing'. Much the same is implied by the statement above in verse 8, 'Joseph recognized his brothers and they did not recognize him'. For these words mean that the truths of the Church were seen by the celestial of the spiritual by the light it possessed, and that truth from the Divine was not seen in natural light that was not yet brightened with heavenly light; see 5427, 5428.