1043. The symbolism of a cloud as the dim light in which a spiritual person lives, as compared to a heavenly person, is established by the remarks immediately above on the rainbow. A rainbow with all its colors, after all, never occurs except in a cloud. To repeat, the darkness through which the sunbeams shine is itself what turns colorful. The type of darkness that the shaft of light touches, then, determines the color.

So it is for a spiritual person. The darkness in such people — which is being called a cloud — is falsity, which is the same thing as their intellectual selfhood. When the Lord infuses this selfhood with innocence, charity, and mercy, the cloud is no longer seen as something false but as the outward appearance of truth, together with truth that is true, which comes from the Lord. This is what creates the effect of a colorful arc. It is a kind of spiritual transformation that is completely impossible to describe. If it is not pictured in terms of color and the generation of color, I do not know whether it can be explained in a comprehensible way.

[2] What this cloud is like in a person reborn can be gleaned from an individual's condition before regeneration. We are regenerated by what we suppose to be religious truth. (We each imagine our own theology to be the truth.) This supplies us with conscience. So for us, after we have acquired conscience, violating the strictures stamped on our minds as religious truth is violating our conscience. This is true of every regenerate person, because the Lord regenerates large numbers of people of every creed. When we have regenerated, we do not receive any direct revelation (except the ideas instilled in us through the Word and preaching from the Word). But since we do receive love for our fellow humans, the Lord works through that love to affect our cloud. Light then floods out of it, as happens when the sun strikes a cloud, making it brighter and variegating its color. The same process also creates something like a bow in the cloud. So the thinner the cloud is — that is, the more religious truth it has mixed in — the lovelier the bow is. The thicker the cloud is, though — or the less religious truth it has — the less attractive the bow is. Innocence adds a great deal of beauty; it lends a vivid glow to the colors, so to speak.

[3] All apparent truths are clouds, and they engross our attention when we focus on the Word's literal meaning, since the Word speaks in appearances. But when we maintain a simple trust in the Word (even if we cling to the appearances) and cultivate a feeling of charity, the cloud is relatively thin. For those inside the church, the Lord forms a conscience within this cloud.

All instances of ignorance about truth are also clouds. We live in these clouds when we do not know what the truth of the genuine faith is, when we more generally do not know what the Word is, and especially when we have never heard about the Lord. For those outside the church, the Lord forms a conscience within this cloud. Ignorance, you see, is itself capable of holding innocence and therefore charity within it.

All falsities, too, are clouds, but these clouds are the shadowy darkness inside either those who have a false conscience (as discussed earlier [§1033]) or those who have no conscience.

These are the general qualities of cloud. As for their quantity, we have such large, thick clouds inside that if we were aware of it, we would be astounded to think that any rays of light from the Lord could ever shine through, or that anyone could be reborn. Those who believe they have the smallest cover of cloud sometimes have a huge amount, while those who believe they have a huge amount have less.

[4] Spiritual people have these kinds of clouds around them, but heavenly people have smaller ones, because they have love for the Lord implanted in the will-related part of their mind. As a result, they also do not have the conscience that a spiritual person has. Instead, the Lord gives them the ability to perceive goodness, together with the truth growing out of what is good. When people's capacity of will is such that it can receive the radiance of a heavenly flame, their capacity for understanding glows with its light, and love enables them to recognize and perceive everything true in the realm of faith. Their power of will is then like a miniature sun shining into their intellectual side. This is what the people of the earliest church were like.

Sometimes our willpower is radically depraved and hellish, though, so that a new will (which is conscience) is formed in our intellectual part. This is what happened with the people of the ancient church, and it occurs with every regenerate individual who is part of the spiritual church. When it does, there is dense cloud, because the person has to learn what is true and good and cannot intuit it. Under these circumstances, falsity flows in endlessly from the person's black, will-related part, or rather through it from hell. This is the dark shadow of a cloud. That is why the intellectual side of a spiritual person can never be enlightened the way it is in a heavenly person. Consequently, the cloud in this verse symbolizes the dim light in which a spiritual person lives, compared to a heavenly one.

1033. Non-Christians also receive the gift of a conscience for what is right and good, according to their religious tradition, as noted. This is how it stands:

The general kinds of conscience are true conscience, spurious conscience, and false conscience.

A true conscience is one that the Lord forms out of genuine religious truth. When we have been gifted with this conscience, we are afraid to go against the truth that the faith teaches, because to do so is to violate conscience. No one can receive this kind of conscience but those who are imbued with the truths of the faith. For this reason not many in Christendom do, since everyone sets up her or his own theology as religious truth. Still, those who are reborn receive a conscience, and charity along with it, since charity is the foundation of conscience.

[2] A spurious conscience is one formed in non-Christians out of the tradition they were born into and brought up in. For them, acting contrary to this is acting contrary to conscience. When their conscience is founded on charity and mercy, and on obedience, they are the kind of people who can and do receive true conscience in the other life, since there is nothing they love better or more fervently than the truth that the faith teaches.

[3] A false conscience is one formed not from internal but from external considerations, that is, not from charity but from selfishness and materialism. People with this kind of conscience see themselves as violating conscience when they offend their neighbor and also imagine that they feel an inward torment then. But the reason for their qualms is that in their mind's eye they see their offense as endangering their own life, position, reputation, wealth, or income, and as doing harm to themselves. Some acquire a certain softness of heart by heredity, some by effort; but it is false conscience.