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26 DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM §686869There is something else that we need to know about this lifting of theinner levels of our minds. Reaction is characteristic of everything createdby God. Only life is action, while reaction is prompted by the action oflife. This reaction seems to be proper to the created being because it becomesperceptible when that being is stirred; so when it happens in us, itseems to be our own. The reason is that even though we are only lifereceivers,we have no sense that our life is anything but our own.This is why we react against God as a result of our inherited evil.However, to the extent that we believe that all our life comes fromGod and that everything good about it comes from an act of God andeverything bad about it from our own reaction, our reaction becomes aproperty of the action and we are then acting with God with apparentautonomy. The equilibrium of all things comes from action and immediatereaction, and everything must necessarily be in an equilibrium.I mention these things to prevent any belief that we ourselves climbup to God on our own power. It is done by the Lord.Divinity fills all space in the universe nonspatially. Nature has two basicproperties: space and time. In this physical world, we use them to formthe concepts of our thinking and therefore the way we understandthings. If we stay engaged with them and do not raise our minds abovethem, there is no way we can grasp anything spiritual and divine. We entanglesuch matters in concepts drawn from space and time, and to theextent that we do, the light of our discernment becomes merely earthly.When we use this light to think logically about spiritual and divine matters,it is like using the dark of night to figure out things that can be seenonly in the light of day. Materialism comes from this kind of thinking.However, when we know how to raise our minds above images ofthought derived from space and time, we pass from darkness into lightand taste things spiritual and divine. Eventually we see what is inherentin them and what they entail; and then we dispel the darkness of earthlylighting with that [new] light and dismiss its illusions from the center tothe sides.People who possess discernment can think on a higher level thanthese properties of nature—can think realistically, that is—and see withassurance that Divinity, being omnipresent, is not within space. Theycan also see with assurance the other things already mentioned. If theydeny divine omnipresence, though, and attribute everything to nature,then they do not want to be lifted up even though they could be.