Arcana Coelestia volume 7 - Swedenborg Foundation

ARCANA COELESTIA 4064a natural as man has; but it is a spiritual natural, which has becomespiritual by having been conjoined and subjected to the spiritual.[4] From all this it is evident that the things here related in theinternal sense take place actually so in the other life, namely, thatthey perceive what is given them gratuitously, as well as where it isstored up, although man at this day knows nothing of such things.But in ancient times they who were of the church knew suchthings, being taught them by their memory-knowledges and bytheir doctrinals. They were interior men; but since those times menhave become successively more external, insomuch that at this daythey are in the body, thus in the outermost. A sign of this is thatthey do not even know what the spiritual and the internal are, norbelieve in their existence. Nay, to such an outermost in the bodyhave they gone away from interior things, that they do not evenbelieve that there is a life after death, nor that there is a heaven or ahell. Nay, by receding from interior things they have gone to suchan outermost, and have become so stupid in spiritual things, as tobelieve that man’s life is like that of beasts, and therefore that manwill die in like manner; and strange to say the learned believe somore than the simple, and anyone who believes differently isaccounted by them a simpleton.5650. To roll down upon us and to cast himself upon us. That thissignifies that on this account they were to be reduced underabsolute power is evident from the signification of “rolling downupon” anyone, as being to present him as culpable; and from thesignification of “casting one’s self upon” anyone, as being to reducehim under power, here absolute power, for it follows “and to takeus for servants, and our asses.” The case herein is that before thenatural man is conjoined with the spiritual, or the external with theinternal, he is left to think whether he desires to get rid of the lustsarising from the love of self and of the world, together with thethings by which he has defended them, and to yield the commandto the spiritual or internal man. He is left to think this in order thathe may be free to choose what he will. When the natural man apartfrom the spiritual thinks about this, he rejects it; for he loves hislusts because he loves himself and the world. Hence he becomes