657. The symbolism of the lowest, second-level, and third-level [compartments] as matters of fact, reason, and understanding also follows.

There are three levels to the contents of the human intellect. ¹ The lowest has to do with factual knowledge, the middle with reason, and the highest with understanding. These levels are so clearly distinguished from each other that they never blur, but people are unaware of the distinction because they place life exclusively in what they can sense and learn about. Since they fixate on that level, they cannot see even that their ability to reason is different from their knowledge, still less that their ability to understand is different from it. The reality is that the Lord exerts an influence on our rational thinking through the things we truly understand, and on the data in our memory through our rational thinking, giving life to the senses of sight and hearing. This is true influx; this is the true connection between the soul and the body. ²

Life could never exist in us if it did not flow from the Lord into the things we truly understand, and through these into the contents of our rational mind, and through these into the facts stored in our memory. Or to be more accurate, it first has to flow into the contents of our will and through these into the things we understand, and so on.

Even though we are enmeshed in falsity and evil, the Lord's life still enters in through the things we will and understand; but our rational mind absorbs those influences according to its form. This makes it possible for us to reason about, to reflect on, and to understand what is true and good. But more on these subjects below [§§6053-6058, 6189-6215, 6307-6327, 6466-6496, 6598-6626], with the Lord's divine mercy; and also something on the way life operates in animals [§§1902:1, 3646, 4776:4-5, 5850, 6323].

Footnotes:

603. What I have been saying in this book about heaven, the world of spirits, and hell, will be obscure to people who find no delight in knowing about spiritual truths; but it will be clear to people who do have this delight, especially to people involved in an affection for truth for its own sake - that is, people who love truth because it is true. Anything that is loved enters into the concepts of our minds with light, especially when what is loved is true, because all truth is in the light.

[2] References to Passages in Secrets of Heaven Concerning Our Freedom, Inflow, and the Spirits Who Are the Means of Communication.

On Freedom. All freedom is a matter of love or affection, because whatever we love, we do freely: 2870, 3158, 8907 [8987?], 8990, 9585, 9591. Since freedom is a matter of love, it is the life of every individual: 2873. Nothing seems to be part of us unless it comes from freedom: 2880. There is a heavenly freedom and a hellish freedom: 2870, 2873-2874, 9589-9590.

Heavenly freedom comes from heavenly love, or a love of what is good and true: 1947, 2870, 2872, and since a love of what is good and true comes from the Lord, we are truly free only when we are led by the Lord: 892, 905, 2872, 2886, 2890-2892, 9096, 9586-9587, 9589-9591. The Lord brings us into heavenly freedom through regeneration: 2874-2875, 2882, 2892. We need freedom in order to be regenerated: 1937, 1947, 2876, 2881, 3145-3146, 3158, 4031, 8700. Otherwise the love of what is good and true could not be sown in us and become so much a part of us as to seem to be our own: 2877, 2879-2880, 2888. Nothing is united to us that happens under compulsion: 8700, 2875. If we could be forcibly reformed, everyone would be saved: 2881. Compulsion in matters of reformation is destructive: 4031. All worship offered in freedom is worship, but not what is offered under compulsion: 1947, 2880, 7349, 10097. Repentance needs to happen in a state of freedom, and if it happens in a state of compulsion, it does not work: 8392. Just what a state of compulsion is: 8392.

[3] We are allowed to act from the freedom we have as rational beings, so that good may be provided to us; we therefore have a freedom of thinking and intending evil as well, and even of doing it to the extent that the laws do not prevent it: 10777. The Lord holds us between heaven and hell and therefore in a balance so that we can be in freedom for the sake of our reformation: 5982, 6477, 8209, 8907 [8987?]. What is sown in freedom stays with us, but not what is sown under compulsion: 9588. So freedom is never taken away from anyone: 2876, 2881. The Lord does not compel anyone: 1937, 1947.

To compel oneself stems from freedom, but being compelled does not: 1937, 1947. We ought to compel ourselves to resist evil: 1937, 1947, 7914; and to do good as well, apparently on our own, but still recognizing that it comes from the Lord: 2883, 2891-2892, 7914. We become more solidly free in those temptation struggles in which we win, because then we are inwardly compelling ourselves to resist, even though it does not seem that way: 1937, 1947, 2881.

[4] Hellish freedom is being led by love for oneself and love for the world and by their cravings: 2870, 2873. This is the only freedom people in hell know: 2871. Heavenly freedom is as remote from hellish freedom as heaven is from hell: 2873-2874. Hellish freedom, which is being led by love for oneself and love for the world, is not freedom but slavery: 2884, 2890. So slavery is being led by hell: 9586, 9589-9591.

[5] On Inflow. Everything we think and intend flows in; [learned] from experience: 904, 2886-2888, 4151, 4319-4320, 5846, 5848, 6189, 6191, 6194, 6197-6199, 6213, 7147, 10219. Our ability to look into things, think, and draw analytic conclusions comes from inflow: 1288 [1285?], 4319-4320. We could not live for a moment if we were deprived of the inflow from the spiritual world, [from] experience: 2887, 5849, 5854, 6321. The life that flows in from the Lord varies depending on our state and our openness to it: 2069, 5986, 6472, 7343. In evil people, the good that flows in from the Lord is turned into evil, and the truth into falsity; from experience: 3643 [3642 or 3743], 4632. We accept the good and true things that flow in from the Lord to the extent that what is evil and false does not bar the way: 2411, 3142, 3147, 5828.

[6] Everything good flows in from the Lord and everything evil from hell: 904, 4151. Nowadays people believe that everything is in themselves and from themselves, when actually everything is flowing in, as they might learn from the doctrine of the church, which teaches that everything good comes from the Lord and everything evil from the devil: 4249, 6193, 6206. If our belief were in accord with doctrine, we would not claim evil as our own or make good our own: 6206, 6324-6325. How happy our state would be if we believed that everything good flows in from the Lord and everything evil from hell: 6325. People who deny heaven or know nothing about it do not realize that there is any inflow from it: 4322, 5649, 6193, 6479. What inflow is, illustrated by comparisons: 6428 [6128?], 6480 [6190?], 9407.

[7] All of life flows in from the first wellspring of life because this is its source; and it is constantly flowing in, so it comes from the Lord: 3001, 3318, 3237 [3337?], 3338, 3344, 3484, 3619, 3741-3743, 4318-4320, 4417, 4524, 4882, 5847, 5986, 6325, 6468-6470, 6479, 9276, 10196. The inflow is spiritual and not physical, which means that the inflow is from the spiritual world into the natural and not from the natural into the spiritual: 3219, 5119, 5259, 5427-5428, 5477, 6322, 9110-9111 [9109?]. The inflow comes through the inner person into the outer, or through the spirit into the body, and not the other way around, because our spirit is in the spiritual world and our body in the natural world: 1702, 1707, 1940, 1954, 5119, 5259, 5779, 6322, 9380 [9110?]. The inner person is in the spiritual world and the outer in the natural world: 978, 1015, 3628, 4459, 4523-4524, 6057, 6309, 9701-9709, 10156, 10472. It seems as though there were an inflow from our outer natures into our inner, but this is an illusion: 3721. There is an inflow into our rational workings and through these into our information processing, and not the other way around: 1495, 1707, 1940. What the pattern of inflow is like: 775, 880, 1096, 1495, 7270. The inflow comes directly from the Lord and indirectly through the spiritual world or heaven: 6063, 6307, 6472, 9682-9683. The inflow from the Lord comes into what is good in us and through that good into what is true, but not the other way around: 5483 [5482?], 5649, 6027, 8685, 8701, 10153. What is good enables us to accept the inflow from the Lord, but not what is true apart from that good: 8321. Nothing that flows into our thought harms us, only what flows into our volition, because this becomes part of us: 6308.

[8] There is a general inflow: 5850. This is a constant energy favoring action in keeping with the design: 6211. This is what flows into the lives of animals: 5850; and also into the members of the vegetable kingdom: 3648. Further, our thought descends into speech and our intentions into actions and modes of behavior according to this general inflow: 5862, 5990, 6192, 6211.

[9] On Agents. The spirits who are sent out from communities of spirits to other communities or to individual spirits are called "agents": 4403, 5856. Communications in the other life take place by means of emissary spirits like these: 4403, 5856, 5983. Spirits who are sent out to act as emissaries do not think for themselves but think from the spirits who commissioned them: 5985-5987. More about these spirits: 5988-5989.

The End

3318. 'And he was weary' means a state of conflict. This becomes clear from the meaning of 'weary' or weariness as the state following conflict. Here however, because the subject is a state of conflict in which good and truth within the natural man are joined together, the state of conflict itself is meant. As regards 'weary' here meaning a state of conflict, this is not apparent except from the train of thought in the internal sense, and in particular from the fact that without conflicts, or what amounts to the same, without temptations, good is unable to be joined to truth in the natural man.

[2] So that the nature of this state may be known - though only as man experiences it - let a brief statement be made regarding it. Man is nothing other than an organ or vessel which receives life from the Lord, for man does not live of himself, 290, 1954, 2021, 2536, 2706, 2886-2889, 3001. The life flowing in with man from the Lord comes from His Divine Love. This Love, that is, the life from it, flows in and applies itself to the vessels that are in man's rational and that are in his natural. On account of the hereditary evil into which man is born, and on account of the evil of his own doing which man acquires to himself, these vessels with him are set the wrong way round for receiving that life. But insofar as it is possible for this inflowing life to do so, it resets those vessels to receive it. These vessels within the rational man and within his natural are such as are called truths. In themselves they are nothing else than perceptions of the variations in form possessed by those vessels and of the changes of state which in different ways give rise to those variations, which are produced in the most delicate of organic substances, and in ways that defy description, 2487. Good itself, which possesses life from the Lord, that is, which is life, is that which flows in and resets them.

[3] When therefore those vessels, varying in the forms they take, are set and turned, as has been stated, the wrong way round for inflowing life, they clearly have to be re-positioned to receive that life, that is, to be controlled by it. This cannot possibly be effected as long as the person remains in that condition into which he was born or which he has brought upon himself. Indeed at that time they are unsubmissive because they resolutely withstand and harden themselves against the heavenly order governing the way that life acts. Indeed the good which moves them, and to which they are subservient, is that which stems from self-love and love of the world. From the dull warmth it contains that good makes these vessels what they are. Consequently before they can be made submissive and capable of receiving any of the life that belongs to the Lord's love, they have to be softened. The only ways that such softening can be achieved is by temptations, for temptations take away the things that constitute self-love and contempt for others in comparison with oneself, consequently that constitute self-glory, and also hatred and revenge on account of that. When therefore they have to some extent been subdued and mellowed by means of temptations those vessels start to become yielding and compliant to the life which belongs to the Lord's love and which is constantly flowing in with man.

[4] From this point onwards good, first of all in the rational man and then in the natural, starts to be joined to the truths there, for as has been stated, truths are nothing else than perceptions of the variations in form which are determined by the states that are changing all the time - those perceptions being a product of the life that is flowing in. This is the reason why a person is regenerated, that is, is made new, by means of temptations, or what amounts to the same, by means of spiritual conflicts, and after that receives an inward disposition different from before, that is to say, becomes gentle, humble, single-minded, and contrite at heart. From these considerations one may now see the use served by temptations, which is that good from the Lord may not only flow in but also render the vessels subservient and so join itself to them. For truths are the recipient vessels of good, see 1496, 1832, 1900, 2063, 2261, 2269. Here therefore, since the subject is the joining together of good and truth in the natural man, and since the first stage of that conjunction comes about through the conflicts brought about by temptations, 'he was weary' clearly means a state of conflict.

[5] As for the Lord however, who is the subject here in the highest sense, He so imposed Divine order on everything within Himself by means of the very severe conflicts that went with temptations that nothing remained of the human He had derived from the mother, 1444, 1573, 2159, 2574, 2649, 3036, so that He was not made new as any other human being but was made altogether Divine. For man, who is made new through regeneration, nevertheless retains within himself the inclination towards evil; indeed he retains the evil itself but is withheld from it by the influx of the life that is the life of the Lord's love, and by an extremely powerful force. But the Lord cast out completely everything evil that was His by heredity from the mother and made Himself Divine, doing so even as to the vessels, that is, as to the truths. This is what in the Word is called Glorification.