This can, of course, be a wonderful thing: It is essential for our journey to heaven, and is the reason for the holiness of marriage. But when the men represent falsity it can also be horrendously twisted, as in the attempted homosexual rape in Sodom (Genesis 19) and the rape of the concubine in Gibeah (Judges 19). In a general sense, men represent things of the intellect -- facts, ideas, knowledge, everything from the deepest truths to the most pernicious falsities about life and the Lord. Women in general represents things of affection -- desire, passion, caring, everything from the most exalted love for the Lord to the darkest hatred. When a man “knows” a woman in the Bible, then, it represents a joining together of those intellectual and affectionate faculties. “Know" is also often used in connection with virginity. A women who has “not known a man” represents the affection for truth, unsullied by falsity.

6307. INFLUX AND THE INTERACTION OF SOUL AND BODY - continued

Experience extending over many years now has allowed me to know about the existence of influx from the spiritual world by way of angels and spirits into people's affections and thoughts, to know it so plainly that nothing could be plainer. I have been made aware of it as an inflowing not merely into thoughts but also into affections. Whenever evil and falsity have flowed in I have been allowed to know which hells they came from, and whenever goodness and truth have flowed in to know which angels they came from. Experience has made me so familiar with all this that at last I have been able to know where every specific aspect of my thoughts and affections originated. Yet my thoughts have been just like those I had before.