874. This scene depicts the first stage of regeneration following trial for the people of this church, a stage common to everyone who is being reborn: we imagine that we are doing good deeds and thinking true thoughts under our own power. Because we still cannot see clearly at all, the Lord lets us think this way.

Still, none of the good we do and none of the truth we contemplate while holding this opinion (a mistaken one) is the kind of goodness or truth that makes a part of faith. Nothing that we produce from ourselves can be good, because it is from ourselves — an impure and very unclean source. From an impure and unclean source nothing good can spring, because we are always thinking about how deserving and righteous we are. Some people, as the Lord teaches in Luke 18:9-14, go further and despise others in comparison with themselves. Others do other things just as bad. Self-centered desires add themselves to the mixture, making the exterior look good, although the interior is filthy.

As a consequence, the good that we do at this stage is not the good that belongs to faith. It is the same with the truth that we think. Even if the idea we adopt is absolutely true and is in itself a valid religious concept, nonetheless as long as we adopt it for selfish reasons, it has no religious good within it. Any truth, in order to be theologically true, has to have the good of faith from the Lord within it. That is when it first becomes good and true.

3223. There are two forms of light that give light to man, the light of the world and the light of heaven. The light of the world comes from the sun, the light of heaven from the Lord. The light of the world is intended for the natural or external man, and so for things that exist within the natural man. Although these things do not appear to belong to that light, nevertheless they do, for the natural man is not able to grasp anything except by means of such things as occur and are visible in the world of the natural sun, thus unless they are given some visible form by the light and the shade of that world. All concepts of time and concepts of space, which in the natural man play so great a role that without them he is incapable of thought, belong also to the light of the world. The light of heaven however is intended for the spiritual or internal man. Man's interior mind, where his intellectual concepts reside that are called immaterial, belongs in that light. Of this no one is immediately conscious even though he refers to his intellect as sight and attributes light to it. The reason why he is not immediately conscious of it is that as long as he is engrossed in worldly and bodily interests his perception is solely of such things as belong to the light of the world and not of such as belong to the light of heaven. The light of heaven comes from the Lord alone, and the whole of heaven is bathed in that light.

[2] This light - the light of heaven - is immeasurably more perfect than the light of the world. Things which in the light of the world make a single ray make myriads in the light of heaven. The light of heaven holds intelligence and wisdom within it. This is the light which flows into the light of the world which shines in the external or natural man and causes the latter to perceive things with the senses. Unless the light of heaven were flowing in a person would have no discernment at all, for the life present in things which belong to the light of the world is received from that inflowing light. Between these two forms of light - that is, between things that belong to the light of heaven and those that belong to the light of the world - a correspondence exists when the external or natural man makes one with the internal or spiritual man, that is, when the external man is subservient to the internal. In this case things that occur in the light of the world are representative of such as occur in the light of heaven.