803. Including the bird and the beast and the wild animal and every crawling thing crawling on the earth symbolizes their self-deceptions. Birds symbolize an attachment to falsity, the beast symbolizes corrupt desires, the wild animal symbolizes sensual pleasure, the crawling thing crawling symbolizes bodily and earthly yearnings, and these different impulses are contained within the self-deceptions. The symbolism here is established by earlier demonstrations of the meaning of birds and beasts. A treatment of birds appeared at §40 and above at verses 14-15 of this chapter [§§776-778]. A treatment of beasts also appeared in the latter place [§774] and at §§45, 46, 142, 143, 246 as well.
Because birds symbolize matters of understanding, reason, and fact, they also symbolize the opposites of these — corrupt reasoning, falsity, and attachment to falsity.
These words portray the self-deceptions of a pre-Flood person in their entirety, specifically the feelings of attachment to falsity, corrupt desires, sensual pleasures, and bodily and earthly yearnings that their self-deceptions carried with them. All these impulses are inherent in a person's delusions, although no one realizes it. We tend to consider a false premise or conviction an irreducible unit, or else a single generalized concept, but we are very wrong. The situation is completely otherwise. Each of our feelings derives its manifestation and its nature from resources in our intellect and in our will. Our whole being, then, with all that we understand and all that we will, enters into every emotion that we have and in fact into the most detailed, minute aspects of our emotions.
This has become clear to me from a wealth of experience.
[2] To mention a single example, in the other life spirits can be recognized by just one of the individual ideas that go into their thinking. The angels even receive from the Lord an ability merely to look at a person and fathom immediately what the person's character is, without making the slightest mistake. 1 This shows clearly that every one of our ideas, every one of our feelings, and indeed every shred of feeling in us, no matter how small, is an image and portrait of us. To put it another way, each of these contains an element — whether closely or distantly related — of every thought in our intellect and every impetus of our will.
These verses, then, describe the appalling convictions of a pre-Flood person and how they carry with them attachment to falsity, attachment to evil (corrupt desires), sensual pleasure, and bodily and earthly yearnings. All these impulses are inherent in such convictions, in which bodily and earthly yearnings predominate — and not only in those convictions as a whole but in the most detailed, minute aspects of them.
If we realized the extent of the consequences for one false assumption or one false persuasion, we would be horrified. Each is like an effigy of hell. But if we adopt it in all innocence or ignorance, the falsity of it is easily dispelled.
Footnotes:
1. Swedenborg emphasizes that while it is possible to tell lies on earth, it is not possible to do so in heaven, where "no one can conceal inner character by facial expression and pretend." This is because angels can see the quality of others "instantly, from their faces" (Heaven and Hell 48). Moreover, as indicated in §925:2, in heaven it is even possible to discern the nature of a being from his or her aura. See also note 1 in §322, and notes 1 in §18, 1 in §41, and 1 in §154. [RS]