39. Verse 20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things, living creatures; and let birds fly above the earth, upon the face ¹ of the expanse of the heavens.

After the great lights have been kindled and lodged in the internal man, from which the external man receives its light, a person starts to live for the first time. Till then he can hardly be said to have lived, for he had imagined that the good he had done he had done from himself, and the truth he had uttered he had spoken from himself. And since man functioning from himself is dead - there being nothing in him that is not evil and false - therefore whatever he brings forth from himself is not living. So true is this that of himself he is incapable of doing any good deed that is in itself good. The fact that man cannot begin to think about good or to will it, and so cannot do good, unless the Lord is the source, is clear to everyone from the doctrine of faith, for the Lord says in Matthew,

He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. Matthew 13:37.

Nor can good come from anywhere else than the one fount itself of all good, as yet again He says,

Nobody is good but one, God. Luke 18:19.

[2] Nevertheless when the Lord is revitalizing a person, or regenerating him, He does allow him, to begin with, to imagine that good and truth originate in himself, for at that point a person cannot grasp anything else, or be led to believe and finally perceive, that all good and truth come from the Lord alone. As long as he held the former opinion his truths and goods were comparable to 'a tender plant', then 'a plant bearing seed', and after that 'a fruit tree', which are inanimate. But once he has been brought to life by love and faith and believes that the Lord is at work in every good deed he does and in every truth he utters, he is compared first to creeping things from the water and to birds which fly above the earth, and then to beasts, all of which are animate and are called 'living creatures'.

脚注:

6195. Some spirits were once present with me for a long time, neither particularly good nor particularly evil ones, a little way above my head. They had the ability to flow deeply into people's affections; and because this was what they wanted to do, they also entered mine after a while and tied themselves to me in such a way that it seemed as though they could hardly be separated. I talked to them about what was going on, saying that they ought to separate themselves from me. But they could not do it. When they tried to do so and did succeed to some small extent, they then caused my thinking to be so dull that I could not think except in a confused and disjointed manner; and I felt pain in my head like that experienced by people who are fainting. This showed me how people's loves serve to join them together and that all in the next life are joined together through them. This is the reason why spirits who enter the actual affections of another take possession of him, just as happens in the world when one person indulges another person's love. But truths do not join people together, only affections for truth do so.

[2] From this it has become clear to me how a person is joined either to heaven or to hell, namely through his loves. He is joined to hell through his self-love and love of the world, but to heaven through his love of the neighbour and love of God. In addition it has been clear to me that a person tied to hell cannot possibly be released except by Divine means employed by the Lord, as has also been shown to me from those who have been tied to me by merely slender affections. I was not released from them except through intermediate kinds of love, by means of which they were gradually joined to others. As the spirits were separated they seemed to be placed further away from me, in front and to the left. I noticed that the separation took place through changes in the state of my affections; for as my affections changed, so those spirits departed from me. This also revealed to me where the appearances of distance in the next life originate.