1383. GENESIS – TWAALFDE HOOFDSTUK

De innerlijke gewaarwording van geesten en engelen, en de sferen in het andere leven. Onder de wonderen in het andere leven behoren de innerlijke gewaarwordingen; hiervan bestaan twee soorten: de ene, die de engelen eigen is, bestaat hierin, dat zij innerlijk gewaarworden, wat waar en goed is, en wat van de Heer komt, wat van henzelf, en verder, wanneer dat wat zij denken, spreken en doen, van henzelf komt, vanwaar het is en van welke aard. De andere soort, die allen met elkaar gemeen hebben, en welke de engelen in de hoogste volmaaktheid bezitten en de geesten overeenkomstig hun hoedanigheid, bestaat hierin, dat zij bij de eerste nadering van de ander weten, van welke aard hij is

4626. When any spirit is approaching, even though still a long way off and out of sight, his presence is detected, as often as the Lord allows it to be, from a certain kind of spiritual sphere. From that sphere one recognizes what his life is like, what his affection is like, and what his faith is like. Angelic spirits with keener perception know from his sphere countless things about the state of his life and faith, as has been demonstrated to me many times. When it pleases the Lord these spheres are also converted into odours; one smells quite distinctly an actual odour. The reason those spheres are converted into odours is that odour corresponds to perception and that perception is so to speak spiritual odour, from which also [natural] odour descends. But see what has been brought forward already on these matters - regarding spheres, in 1048, 1053, 1316, 1504-1519, 1695, 2401, 2489, 4464; perception, in 483, 495, 503, 521, 536, 1383, 1384, 1388, 1391, 1397, 1398, 1504, 1640; and odours produced by these, in 1514, 1517-1519, 1631, 3577.

4791. CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GRAND MAN - continued

IN THIS SECTION THE CORRESPONDENCE OF TASTE AND OF THE TONGUE, AND ALSO OF THE FACE, WITH THAT GRAND MAN

The tongue provides an entrance leading into both the lungs and the stomach, and so represents a kind of forecourt leading to spiritual things and to celestial ones, to spiritual because it serves the lungs and thereby speech, to celestial because it serves the stomach which supplies nourishment to the blood and the heart. For the lungs correspond to spiritual realities, the heart to celestial ones, see 3635, 3883-3896. All this being so, the tongue corresponds in general to the affection for truth, that is, to those in the Grand Man whose affection is for truth, and after that whose affection is for good which is a product of that truth. People therefore who love the Word of the Lord and wish to gain from it a knowledge of what is good and true belong to that province. Yet they differ from one another, in that some belong to the actual tongue, some to the larynx and trachea, some to the throat, some also to the gums, while others belong to the lips. For not even the smallest part of the human being fails to have a correspondence.

[2] I have been allowed on many occasions to learn by experience that those governed by an affection for truth belong to that province understood in the broad sense. On one occasion they plainly entered my tongue, on another my lips; and I have been allowed to talk to them. I have also noticed that some correspond to the more internal parts of the tongue and lips, others to their more external parts. There are some who have an affection for and receive only exterior truths, not interior ones, though they do not reject them. The operation of these I have felt in the exterior but not the interior parts of my tongue.