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.

Fotnoter:

142. Genesis 2:19-20. And out of the soil Jehovah God formed every animal of the field and every bird in the heavens and brought it to the human to see what he would call it. And whatever the human called the living soul, that was its name. And the human gave names to every beast and to the bird in the heavens and to every wild animal of the field; but for the human no aid was found that seemed to be his.

Animals symbolize emotions of a heavenly type; birds in the heavens symbolize emotions of a spiritual type. To put it another way, animals symbolize the contents of the will, birds the contents of the intellect. Bringing them to the human to see, so that he could call them by name, means granting humankind the ability to recognize the nature of those feelings; the fact that he gave them names means that people recognized the nature of the feelings. At the same time, even though they recognized the nature of the virtuous emotions and true concepts given them as gifts by the Lord, they still strove for autonomy, as expressed in the same words used before: he did not find an aid that seemed to be his.

18. The face of the abyss means our cravings and the falsities these give rise to; we are wholly made up of cravings and falsities and wholly surrounded by them. Because no ray of light is in us, we are like an abyss, or something disorganized and dim.

Many passages in the Word also call such people abysses and sea depths, which are drained (that is, devastated) before a person is regenerated. In Isaiah, for instance:

Wake up, as in the days of old, the generations of eternity! Are you not draining the sea, the waters of the great abyss, and making the depths of the sea a path for the redeemed to cross? May those redeemed by Jehovah return! (Isaiah 51:9-10, 11)

An individual of this type, observed from heaven, looks like a dark mass with no life at all to it. ¹

The same words involve an individual's overall spiritual devastation — a preliminary step to regeneration. ² (The prophets have much more to say about it.) ³ Before we can learn what is true and be affected by what is good, the things that stand in the way and resist have to be put aside. The old self must die before the new self can be conceived. ⁴

Fotnoter: