Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:53 — 6.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

The natural mind cannot come up with anything on its own 

Doctrine of Sacred Scripture115. But as there are those who maintain, and have confirmed themselves in the opinion, that without a Word it is possible for a man to know of the existence of God, and of heaven and hell, and of all the other things taught by the Word, and as they thereby weaken the authority and holiness of the Word, if not with the lips, yet in the heart, therefore it is not practicable to deal with them from the Word, but only from rational light, for they do not believe in the Word, but in themselves. Investigate the matter from rational light, and you will find that in man there are two faculties of life called the understanding and the will, and that the understanding is subject to the will, but not the will to the understanding, for the understanding merely teaches and shows the way. Make further investigation, and you will find that man’s will is what is his own [proprium], and that this, regarded in itself, is nothing but evil, and that from this springs what is false in the understanding.

[2] Having discovered these facts you will see that from himself a man does not desire to understand anything but that which comes from the own of his will, and also that it is not possible for him to do so unless there is some other source from which he may know it. From the own of his will a man does not desire to understand anything except that which relates to himself and to the world; everything above this is to him in thick darkness. So that when he sees the sun, the moon, the stars, and chances to think about their origin, how is it possible for him to think otherwise than that they exist of themselves? Can he raise his thoughts higher than do many of the learned in the world who acknowledge only nature, in spite of the fact that from the Word they know of the creation of all things by God? What then would these same have thought if they had known nothing from the Word?

[3] Do you believe that the wise men of old, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and others, who wrote about God and the immortality of the soul, got this from themselves [proprio]? Not so, but from others who had it by tradition from those who first knew it from the [Ancient] Word. Neither do the writers on natural theology get any such matters from themselves. They merely confirm by rational arguments what they have already become acquainted with from the church in which is the Word; and there may be some among them who confirm without believing it.

116… If man had been able of himself to know that there is a God and a life after death, why has he not known that after death a man is still a man? Why does he believe that his soul or spirit is like a breath of air, or like the ether, and that it has no eyes with which to see, nor ears with which to hear, nor mouth with which to speak, until it shall have been conjoined and combined with its carcass and with its skeleton? Assume then the existence of a doctrine of worship that has been hatched solely from rational light, and will not that doctrine be that a man’s own self is to be worshiped? For ages this is what has been done, and is done at the present day by some who know from the Word that God alone ought to be worshiped. From what is man’s own, any other kind of worship, even that of the sun and moon, is impossible.

The Lord alone has Proprium

Arcana Coelestia 149 [2] Man’s proprium when viewed from heaven looks just like something bony, lifeless, and utterly misshapen, and so in itself something dead. But once it has received life from the Lord it appears as something having flesh. For man’s proprium is something altogether dead, though it has the appearance to him of being something; indeed it appears to be everything. Whatever is living within him comes from the Lord‘s life; and if this were to leave him, he would fall down dead as a stone. For he is purely an organ of life, though the nature of the organ determines that of the life-affection. The Lord alone possesses Proprium. By His Proprium He has redeemed man and by His Proprium saves him. The Lord‘s Proprium is Life, and from His Proprium man’s proprium, which in itself is dead, is given life.

The ‘chinks‘ that arise when we think from the senses

6564…The Lord continually flows in through man’s internal with good and truth, good giving life and its heat, which is love, and truth giving enlightenment and its light, which is faith. But when this influx advances further, namely, into the exteriors, with the evil it is resisted and rejected, or is perverted or stifled; and then according to the rejection, perversion, or stifling, the interiors are closed, an entrance only remaining open here and there as through chinks round about; and from this there remains to the man the capacity to think and will, but against truth and good. This closing penetrates toward the exteriors more and more, according to the life of evil, and the consequent persuasion of falsity, and this down to the sensuous degree, from which then comes the thought. Pleasures and cravings then carry everything off. In such a state are those who are in the hells; for all considerations of what is honorable and good for the sake of gain, honor, and reputation, are taken away from the evil who come into the other life, and then they are in what is sensuous.

It will feel like self compulsion

6567…So long as the mere truth which is of faith predominates with a man, and not the good which is of charity, so long the natural or external man has not been made submissive to the spiritual or internal man. But as soon as good has the dominion, the natural or external man submits himself, and then the man becomes a spiritual church. That such is the case is known from the fact that the man does from affection what the truth teaches, and that he does not act contrary to this affection, however the natural desires it. The very affection and consequent reason have the dominion, and subdue in the natural the delights of the love of self and of the world, as also the fallacies which had filled the memory-knowledges there; and at last so completely that this subjugation comes to be among the man’s pleasures; and then the natural is at rest, and afterward is in agreement; and when it is in agreement, it then partakes of the pleasantness of the internal. From all this it may be known what is meant by the submission of the things in the natural under the internal, which is signified by “his brethren went and fell down before him, and said, Behold we are thy servants.”

As a tree falls, there it lies – the hellish proprium cannot be changed

Spiritual Experiences 4645. HOW IT IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD THAT AS A TREE FALLS, IT REMAINS: MEMORY. So long as a man is alive [in the world], he is in the ultimate of order. He possesses a corporeal memory, which grows, and in which are to be rooted things which are of the interior memory; hence the more harmonies and correspondences of good and truth there are in them and among them, the more he has of life from the Lord, and the more he can be perfected in the other life. But that memory in which interior things are rooted, is exterior or corporeal. Man, after death, has, indeed, all his own exterior or corporeal memory, or the whole and every one of its belongings; but it can no longer grow; and, where it is not, new harmonies and correspondences cannot be formed. And, hence, all things of his interior memory are there, and they are terminated in his exterior memory, although it is not allowed to use this. From these things it may be manifest, what means [the statement] that as the tree falls it remains. Not that he who is in good cannot be perfected: he is perfected, immensely, even to angelic wisdom – but, according to the harmony and correspondence which existed between internals and externals, whilst he was alive in the world. After the life of the body, no one receives external things, but things interior and internal.

Divine Providence 277b. That man must be led away from evil in order to be reformed is evident without explanation; for he that is in evil in the world is in evil after he has left the world; consequently if evil is not removed in the world it cannot be removed afterwards. Where the tree falls there it lies. So, too, does a man’s life when he dies remain such as it has been. Every one is judged according to his deeds; not that these are enumerated, but because he returns to them and acts in the same way; for death is a continuation of life, with the difference that man cannot then be reformed. All reformation is effected in completeness, that is, simultaneously in first principles and in outmosts; and outmosts are reformed in agreement with first principles while man is in the world, and cannot be reformed afterwards, because the outmosts of life that man carries with him after death become quiescent, and are in agreement with his interiors, that is, they act as one.

Heaven and Hell 547. From this it is clear that it is from hell that man does evil, and from the Lord that he does good. But man believes that whatever he does he does from himself, and in consequence of this the evil that he does sticks to him as his own; and for this reason man is the cause of his own evil, and in no way the Lord. Evil in man is hell in him, for it is the same thing whether you say evil or hell. And since man is the cause of his own evil he is led into hell, not by the Lord but by himself. For so far is the Lord from leading man into hell that it is He who delivers man from hell, and this He does so far as man does not will and love to be in his own evil. All of man’s will and love continues with him after death (470-484). He who wills and loves evil in the world wills and loves the same evil in the other life, but he no longer suffers himself to be withdrawn from it. If, therefore, a man is in evil he is tied to hell, and in respect to his spirit is actually there, and after death desires nothing so much as to be where his evil is; consequently it is man who casts himself into hell after death, and not the Lord.

AC 6559…How the case is with returning evil, or with penalties, in the spiritual world, must be told, because from this the internal sense of these words is plain. If evil spirits do any evil in the world of spirits beyond what they have imbued themselves with by their life in the world, punishers are instantly at hand and chastise them in exact accordance with the degree in which they pass these limits; for it is a law in the other life that no one must become worse than he had been in this world. They who are being punished cannot tell how these chastisers know that the evil is beyond what they had imbued themselves with; but they are informed that there is such an order in the other life that the very evil is attended with its penalty, so that the evil of the deed is wholly conjoined with the evil of the penalty, that is to say, its penalty is in the evil itself; and therefore that it is according to order for the requiters to be instantly at hand.

[2] This is what happens when evil spirits do evil in the world of spirits; but in their own hell they chastise one another according to the evil which they had by act imbued themselves with in this world; for this evil they bring with them into the other life. From all this it is evident how it is to be understood that the penalty impends according to the desert, which is signified by the words, “returning he will return unto us all the evil that we requited to him.” But as regards good spirits, if perchance they speak or do evil, they are not punished, but pardoned, and also excused; for their end is not to speak or do evil, and they know that such things are excited in them by hell, so that they have not come to pass by their fault; and the same is also observed from their resistance, and afterward from their grief.

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.