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.

5232. 'Me and the chief of the bakers' means both kinds of sensory power. This is clear from the representation of the chief of the cupbearers, to whom 'me' refers here, as the sensory power subject in general to the understanding part of the mind, dealt with in 5077, 5082, and from the representation of 'the chief of the bakers' as the sensory power in general subject to the will part, dealt with in 5078, 5082, so that 'me and the chief of the bakers' means both kinds of sensory power. The expression 'both kinds of sensory power' is used because in the human being there are two mental powers - the will and the understanding - which make up his life, and these have a connection with every single thing within him. The reason there are in the human being two mental powers which constitute his life is that there are two elements which compose life in heaven, namely goodness and truth. Goodness is connected with the will, truth with the understanding. From this one may see that there are two elements which compose the spiritual man and as a consequence constitute blessedness in the next life; these are charity and faith. For charity is essentially goodness, and faith essentially truth, so that charity is connected with the will and faith with the understanding Every single thing in the natural world too has a connection with these two, goodness and truth; it comes into being from these and is kept in being by them.

[2] The fact that every single thing in the natural world has a connection with those two elements is perfectly plain from the existence of heat and light. Heat has a connection with good and light a connection with truth, and therefore spiritual heat is the good of love, while spiritual light is the truth of faith. Since every single thing in the entire natural creation has a connection with these two - with goodness and truth - and since good is represented in heat, and faith in light, anyone can judge for himself what a person is like if he possesses faith alone without any charity, or what amounts to the same, if he possesses an understanding of truth alone without any desire for good. Does he not resemble the situation in winter, when light shines and yet every single thing is dormant for lack of heat? That is what the state is like of the person who possesses faith alone and no good of love. His state is one of cold and darkness, of cold because he is averse to goodness, of darkness because he is on that account averse to truth. For anyone averse to goodness is also averse to truth, no matter how much it may seem to him that he is not; for the one aversion leads to the other. This is what that person's state comes to be like after death.