868. The symbolism of till the water dried up on the earth as apparently getting rid of falsity can be seen from the circumstances a person faces when being reborn.

Everyone today believes that the evil and falsity we have in us is wholly dispelled and abolished when we regenerate, so that when our rebirth is complete, nothing evil or false remains. People suppose we are then pure and righteous, as if we had been washed and rinsed with water. But this belief is absolutely false. Not a single evil or falsity is so thoroughly dispelled as to be abolished. Everything we inherited at infancy and everything we acquired through our actions remains, so that even when we have become regenerate we consist of unrelieved evil and falsity. Souls after death go through experiences that demonstrate this fact to them.

The same thing is also clear enough from the consideration that we have no goodness or truth whatever except from the Lord and that all our vices and distortions come from our selfhood. If people — or spirits, or even angels — were left on their own for even the smallest moment, they would make a spontaneous rush for hell. For this reason the Word says that heaven is not pure [Job 15:15]. The angels acknowledge this, and no one who fails to acknowledge it can be among them. The Lord's mercy alone frees them from hell, indeed removes them from hell and keeps them from voluntarily plunging right back in.

Angels perceive plainly that the Lord keeps them from running headlong into hell. Good spirits do too, up to a point. But evil spirits, like people on earth, do not believe it, although they have been shown many times. A description of my experiences on this subject will appear below, by the Lord's divine mercy. ¹

[2] The human condition, then, is such that we can never banish anything evil or false so completely as to eliminate it, since evil and falsity make up those aspects of life that are all our own. Because of this, when the Lord uses times of trouble to regenerate us, in his divine mercy he subdues our evil and falsity to the point where they look dead, although they are not; they are merely so well conquered that they cannot stand up to the goodness and truth the Lord gives us.

Through our times of trouble the Lord also gives us a new capacity for receiving goodness and truth. He endows us with conceptions of what is good and true, and feelings of affection for it, and whatever is evil and false can then be bent in that direction. He also introduces into our general ideas (as described above [§848:3]) more specific ones, and into these the most specific, which are hidden to us and of which we are totally unaware, since they lie beyond the reach of our comprehension and perception. This subconscious knowledge serves as a reservoir or container into which the Lord can pour neighborly love, which itself holds the innocence he can instill.

These things, when mixed together in marvelous balance in a person, spirit, or angel, can present an image of a rainbow, which is why a rainbow was used as the sign of the pact mentioned in Genesis 9:12-13, 14-15, 16. For more on this, with the Lord's divine mercy, see there [§§1036-1056].

When we have come into this form, we are called regenerate. Everything evil and false in us remains, but then everything good and true is also preserved. Bad people find that all the forms of evil and falsity they had indulged in during bodily life return in exactly the same form in the next life, where they turn into the hallucinations and punishments of hell. Good people in the next life, though, recall all the states marked by goodness and truth that they had experienced — states of friendship, love for others, and innocence — along with the attendant joys and pleasures, now increased and multiplied beyond measure.

This, then, is the apparent eradication of falsity symbolized by the drying up of the water.

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