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Arcana Coelestia 6497.Genesis: CH 50 7-11. And Joseph went up to bury his father; and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, 8. And all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father’s house: only their babes, and their flocks, and their herds, they left in the land of Goshen. 9. And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen; and the army was exceeding great. 10. And they came to the threshing-floor Atad, which is in the passage of the Jordan, and they wailed there a very great and grievous wailing; and he made a mourning for his father seven days. 11. And the inhabitant of the land, the Canaanite, saw the mourning in the threshing-floor Atad, and they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians; wherefore they called the name of it Abel-mizraim, which is in the passage of the Jordan.
Divine Love and Wisdom 69 There are two things proper to nature – space and time. From these man in the natural world forms the ideas of his thought, and thereby his understanding. If he remains in these ideas, and does not raise his mind above them, he is in no wise able to perceive things spiritual and Divine, for these he involves in ideas drawn from space and time; and so far as that is done the light [lumen] of his understanding becomes merely natural. To think from this lumen in reasoning about spiritual and Divine things, is like thinking from the thick darkness of night about those things that appear only in the light of day. From this comes naturalism. But he who knows how to raise his mind above ideas of thought drawn from space and time, passes from thick darkness into light, and has discernment in things spiritual and Divine, and finally sees the things which are in and from what is spiritual and Divine; and then from that light he dispels the thick darkness of the natural lumen, and banishes its fallacies from the middle to the sides. Every man who has understanding is able to transcend in thought these properties of nature, and actually does so.
Arcana Coelestia 3404 [2] In order that it may be still more evident what these appearances of truth are, take also the following example. It is known that the Divine is infinite as to being (Esse), and eternal as to manifestation (Existere), and that the finite is not capable of comprehending the infinite, nor indeed the eternal, for the eternal is the infinite as to manifestation (Existere); and as the Divine Itself is infinite and eternal, all things which are from the Divine are also infinite and eternal, and being infinite cannot possibly be comprehended by angels, because these are finite. For this reason the things which are infinite and eternal are presented before the angels in appearances which are finite; but still in such appearances as are very far above the sphere of man’s comprehension. For example, man cannot possibly have any idea of the eternal except from time; and this being the case, he cannot possibly comprehend what is from eternity, thus what the Divine was before time, or before the world was created. And so long as there is in his thought anything of an idea from time, if he thinks on the subject he must necessarily fall into errors from which he cannot be extricated. But to the angels, who are not in the idea of time, but in the idea of state (of mind), it is given to perceive this most clearly, for the eternal with them is not the eternal of time, but the eternal of state (of mind), without the idea of time. [3] Hence it is manifest in what appearances the angels are in comparison with man, and how much their appearances are above those with man; for man cannot have the smallest thought apart from time and space; whereas the angels derive nothing from these; but in their stead from state (of mind) as to being (Esse) and as to manifestation (Existere). From all this we can see what is the nature of the appearances of truth here treated of, and which are of a higher degree. In what follows, the appearances of truth of a lower degree are treated of in their order, even as they are adapted to mankind.
Spiritual Experiences – Minor ( Interium Diary) 4609. What a mental image of the infinite and eternal is like if the mental imagery is from space and time. I spoke with spirits also about a mental image of the infinite and eternal derived from space and time, saying that an image of them entirely perishes and becomes none, causing disbelief in the Divinity. It was suggested to think of the eternal before the creation of the world, and that if time is in the thought, there is no idea of it. If we think from time, that finite notion arises that there was some beginning to the existence of God, thus that He arose. It is not possible to think otherwise, from time. [2] The case is the same with regard to space outside of the universe, which also cannot exist to infinity, if we think from space. There would be no endpoint, and so forth – although one is never led away from that absurdity except when one’s notion of time and space perishes. The more interiorly anyone is elevated into heaven, the farther he or she is removed from the mental image of time and space; and the more deeply one is removed from heaven, the more one comes into the image of time and space – thus the farther away one is from a mental image of the infinite and eternal, thus from faith. Time and space are what fix human mental imagery and cause it to be entirely earthly and to relate to other imagery, of which the person is unaware. And they constitute the earthly person, who reasons. The same applies to the Divine Humanity of the Lord, whose finite image we conceive of from the bodily properties in ourselves and in others. Unless we are removed from this image, we cannot conceive otherwise than that the Lord is just as any other human being. Likewise, the image of Three in the one God: the numerical image of a trine is one of space and time. From the human, the finite image is conceived of as a separated trine, but according to the angelic mental image as one.
Third Round posts are short audio clips taken from Round 3 comments offered in the online Logopraxis Life Group meetings. The aim is to keep the focus on understanding the Text in terms of its application to the inner life along with reinforcing any key LP principles that have been highlighted in the exchanges.
