Arcana Coelestia volume 7 - Swedenborg Foundation

ARCANA COELESTIA 3684sensuous of the sight, because this corresponds and is subordinateto the intellectual; this sensuous sees from the light of the world,which is from the sun, and all that it sees is worldly, bodily, andearthly.[2] There are in man derivations from the intellectual part, whichis in the light of heaven, down to the sensuous, which is in the lightof the world; unless this were so, the sensuous could not have anyhuman life. The sensuous of man has no life in consequence ofseeing from the light of the world, for the light of the world has nolife in it; but in consequence of seeing from the light of heaven, forthis light has life in it. When this light falls with man into thosethings which are from the light of the world, it vivifies them andcauses him to see objects intellectually, thus as a man; and fromthis, by knowledges born from things he has seen and heard in theworld, thus from things that have entered through the senses, manhas intelligence and wisdom, and from these has civil, moral, andspiritual life.[3] As regards the derivations specially, in man they are of such anature that they cannot be briefly set forth. They are steps ordegrees as of a ladder between the intellectual part and thesensuous, but no one can apprehend these degrees unless he knowsthat they are most distinct from one another, so distinct that theinterior can exist and subsist without the exterior, but not theexterior without the interior. For example: the spirit of man cansubsist without the material body, and also actually does so subsistwhen by death it is separated from the body. The spirit of man is inan interior degree, and the body is in an exterior degree. It is similarwith the spirit of man after death: if he is among the blessed, he isin the last degree among them when in the first heaven, in aninterior degree when in the second, and in the inmost when in thethird; and when he is in this, he is indeed at the same time in therest, but these are quiescent in him, almost as the bodily part inman is quiescent in sleep, but with this difference, that with theangels the interiors are then in the highest wakefulness. Thereforethere are as many distinct degrees in man as there are heavens,besides the last, which is the body with its sensuous things.