This Volume is called Enlightenment to distinguish it from Volume 1 called Reformation and Volume 3 called Regeneration. Each volume addresses itself to one of the three essential steps of full regeneration. Reformation is a process of realigning all concepts in our understanding to concord with the dualities taught in the Writings. Reformation is therefore a struggle against the concepts of nonduality that are already established in our mind, inasmuch as reformation only begins sometime in adult life.

Following reformation which takes a few months, regeneration can begin. Why do we then need to be concerned with Volume 2 called “Enlightenment”? The answer is that regeneration cannot proceed by the same truths that we have for effecting reformation.

When we first read the Writings we are in an unregenerate state, which is the state we are in prior to undergoing reformation. In the unregenerate state we read and study the Writings in its literal meaning. As will be shown in this volume, this literal meaning is expressed in natural-rational correspondences, that is, in natural appearances of truths. Correspondences are called “real appearances” (AC 9927)

The Lord conjoins Himself to uses by means of correspondences, and thus by means of appearances in accordance with the confirmations of these by man. (DP 220)

Correspondences are in great part appearances of truth enclosed within which, nevertheless, genuine truths lie concealed (DP 256)

The Word is written throughout wholly by correspondences (DP 256)

The literal sense of the Word was composed out of what are called appearances and correspondences. (TCR 650)

Since the New Church mind acknowledges the Writings as the Word, we apply whatever is said about the Word to the Writings. The above passages indicate that the Writings are “composed of appearances and correspondences.” It is said, further, that the Lord conjoins Himself to us by means of correspondences.

Clearly therefore, the Second Coming of the Lord is the conjunction of the New Church mind with the Divine Human through the natural-rational correspondences of the Letter of the Writings.

Reformation begins when we decide as an adult that we are going to worship the Letter of the Writings as the Divine Word, which is Divine Truth, which is the Lord Himself in His Second Coming as the Divine Rational. These points are established in this Volume.

In the Letter of the Writings, the human race now has possession of the truths and the reasoning process an individual needs to eliminate all nonduality in the mind, and to substitute only the dualities of the Writings as the basis for all thinking and reasoning. In the new civilization of the Second Coming, this is the definition of how anyone in the world may form the New Church mind in themselves.

The power of the Letter of the Writings is Divine. This power lies in its being written in natural-rational correspondences. The literal sense of each expression in the Writings is a natural-rational correspondence, as will be shown and illustrated in this Volume. Within this, as in a cognitive vessel or containant, lies infinite things in infinite series, since this is the character of the Word (AC 2619, 6620). The living power of the Letter of the Writings comes from what lies within the Letter. The Letter itself is dead (xx). Hence it is a Divine commandment that the New Church mind avoid remaining in the dead Letter and must “scrutate” the Letter to find out what is in it (xx). This refers to systematic, scholarly, and scientific methods for “extracting” the spiritual sense from the Letter, as is shown in this Volume.

We do our conscious rational thinking and reasoning in the portion of the mind called the natural-rational understanding. This level of thinking and reasoning is constituted out of natural-rational correspondences, that is, spiritual-rational truths accommodated to the intellect of the natural mind. The Word of the Old Testament is written in natural-corporeal correspondences, while the Word of the New Testament is written in natural-sensuous correspondences. The Word of the Writings is written in natural-rational correspondences.

The natural-rational correspondences of the Letter of the Writings are therefore a discrete degree above the New Testament correspondences, which in turn are a discrete degree above the Old Testament correspondences.

The Threefold Word has been given to the human race in three portions, each part suitable to the intellectual level of the civilization which received its portion. The natural-rational correspondences of the Writings required that they be written after modern science and the rational age had matured. Swedenborg’s prepared mind, immersed in this modern climate, served as the mechanism for delivering the Latin Word.

This indicates that Swedenborg’s level of conscious thinking and reasoning was immersed in natural-rational correspondences. His thoughts, concepts, ideas were constituted out of natural-rational correspondences. As a result, he was able to compose sentences and paragraphs in Latin that were made wholly of expressions that denote natural-rational correspondences. Many illustrations and demonstrations of this fact are given in this Volume. Undoubtedly Swedenborg also operated at a higher degree of thinking and perceiving when he was in the company of angels, especially higher angels. His thinking was then immersed in and was operating by means of spiritual-rational correspondences. But when it came to composing Latin sentences, which are laid down in a natural language, Swedenborg’s thinking and reasoning operated at a natural level, not spiritual. Hence it is that the Letter of the Writings, that is, the literal meaning of the expressions, refers to natural-rational correspondences. By this process the Lord was able to reveal His Divine Rational laid down in the natural.

The natural-rational correspondences of the Letter of the Writings give us the new rational ability to build up in our natural mind, a representation of this Letter in our knowledge, understanding, and perception. This representation of the Letter in our natural mind is constituted of natural-rational correspondences. These natural-rational correspondences are located in the natural-rational mind. This is the highest portion of the natural mind, as will be illustrated in diagrams. These natural-rational correspondences in the natural-rational mind serve for reformation.

But in order for regeneration to begin the natural-rational correspondences of the Letter in our mind, must be applied to life, that is, to our daily willing and thinking. The moment we begin this activity, which is to be a daily activity for many years, the Lord enlightens us.

Enlightenment in the New Church mind refers to perception of interior meaning in the Letter of the Writings.

The Word is written in correspondences, as already mentioned. The natural-rational correspondences of the Letter of the Writings are appearances of Divine Truth regarding the Divine Rational of the Lord. These natural-rational correspondences contain an interior spiritual meaning which is constituted of spiritual-rational appearances of truth. In other words, the spiritual sense of the Writings is nothing else than the spiritual-rational correspondences that are within the natural-rational correspondences of its Letter.

You can see the all important difference between natural-rational correspondences of the Letter, on the one hand, and on the other, spiritual-rational correspondences of the internal sense of the Letter. The relationship is like that between earth and heaven, or that between what is dead in itself as an ultimate, and what is alive within it as Divine. Swedenborg’s thinking and perception was immersed in spiritual-rational correspondences when in the company of angels, but in natural-rational correspondences when writing in Latin or Swedish. Since the two correspond, we are able to extract from the natural-rational correspondences, the spiritual-rational correspondences which lie within. The Writings have provided detailed instructions on how to apply this method of extraction to the Letter, as is shown in this Volume.

For reformation we use natural-rational correspondences; for regeneration, we use spiritual-rational correspondences. One is a more interior appearance of truth. This more interior appearance of truth is itself an appearance or correspondence, but it is a higher appearance, or higher correspondence, and what is higher is superior.

Superior in this case means closeness of conjunction with the Lord, which is the actual power that effects regeneration. Divine power is needed to effect regeneration because we are born in the jaws of the infernal hells and when we try to change, we face those hells in all their ferocity and tenacity. And the hells are united so that each evil society draws power from all the others there. Only the Lord can overcome the combined power of all the hells. But the Lord cannot effect regeneration without our cooperation. Hence we must struggle and undergo temptations for many years.

This Volume explains the process of enlightenment needed for regeneration.

It warns against the dangers of remaining in the Letter.

It collects many passages from the Writings to show what enlightenment is and how it works in our regeneration.

It debunks and demystifies the various notions and fears that we may have when thinking about the idea of an internal sense to the Writings.

It explains what is the Spiritual Doctrine we are commanded to extract from the Letter of the Writings. It gives various methods of extraction and many illustrations.

I have tried to make only arguments from the Writings and I cite relevant passages. The (xx) citations are still to be inserted. If you know any of these, please email them to me at leon@hawaii.edu. If you find anything that seems like a doctrinal error, please write.

For the Preface to Volume 1, please consult the Table of Contents above.

DEDICATION

To my wife

It is her internal wisdom that led me to write this book as-of myself. She brought into our marriage the conjugial love she has in her from the Lord, inborn from nativity

An inclination to love one of the opposite sex, and with it a capacity for receiving that love, has been implanted in Christians from birth, for the reason that this love comes from the Lord alone

(CL 466).

Wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in them to wish to be one with their husbands … But it is different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but designed to receive that love from their wives (CL 216)

The intelligence of women is by nature modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft and gentle, while the intelligence of men is by nature critical, rough, resistant, argumentative, and given to intemperance. Evidence that this is the nature of women and the nature of men is clearly apparent from the body, face, tone of voice, speech, bearing and behavior of each sex.

(…)

From this I could clearly see that a man is born a form of the intellect, and a woman a form of love. I could also see what the nature of the intellect is and what the nature of love is in their beginnings, and thus what a man's intellect in its development would be like without conjunction with feminine love and eventually conjugial love.

(CL 218)

Chapter 1 The Spiritual Sense Of The Writings Demystified

1. Introduction

Only from doctrine can there be a church (AE 1088)

The interior angels do not even perceive the church, but the faith of that church (AC 1025)

Everyone who is regenerate is a temple of the Lord (AC 40)

'A field' means doctrine, and so everything constituting doctrine concerning faith and charity. (AC 368)

We have to be willing to study the rational truths conveyed by the literal language of the Writings, every day for many years, in order to be able to create for ourselves a rational Doctrine of life out of them, to guide our willing and thinking every conscious moment. The Lord commands us to follow a spiritual discipline by which we compel ourselves to live by in our daily willing and thinking acts. And step by step, the Lord approaches closer and closer in proportion to our sincerity and persistence in this lifelong discipline. We receive from the Lord the conscious light of spiritual understanding by means of the application of Doctrine in our natural mind. This is a conscious light in our natural mind, easily seen from great distance in the spiritual world on account of its spiritual content within the interior-natural mind. The interior-natural is also called the spiritual-natural and is the level of thinking in which the angelic spirits are in the First Heaven (xx).

This spiritual light is the light in which we perceive and think when our thinking is immersed in spiritual-rational correspondences. This light is what provides enlightenment for the New Church mind. This is the light needed by every regenerating mind to be able to resist falsities of evil in us from heredity. As will be shown in this Chapter, the spiritual-rational correspondences that provide us with enlightenment are not located anywhere in the external rational mind. The Letter of the Writings is in the external rational mind, not the interior-natural mind, because this Letter is written in natural-rational correspondences (not spiritual-rational). Only spiritual-rational correspondences afford us the ability to understand spiritual topics spiritually. By means of the natural-rational correspondences we understand spiritual topics naturally. To understand spiritual topics spiritually is called enlightenment because spiritual understanding is only from the light of heaven.

When we see in this spiritual light those things about our willing and thinking all day long, and when we see in this spiritual light those things that surround us in the natural and cultural environments, we experience delight and bliss that cannot be described.

But this delight and bliss is nothing but the consequence of the spiritual heat we sense in response to our willing the good and thinking the true.

This hot light of consciousness shines brightly in the spiritual world. All such light issues from the spiritual Sun (DLW 89). We cannot see this light directly in a natural-sensuous way, but we can see it in a rational way by its correspondences to the natural or external things in our mind and in society. The happiness we feel is not something we can grasp for as a goal. Neither would we be satisfied with this happiness as a goal in itself, rather than as a consequence. The happiness is only a by product of the use, which is the willing and thinking as of-self to harmonize with the Doctrine we take up in our mind.

The Doctrine in our mind is first natural from the Letter of the Writings, then spiritual from enlightenment as we apply the literal sentences to our daily willing and thinking.

When the Doctrine is understood literally, consequently naturally, we consider it the same as the Letter of the Writings. In other words the expressions “the Heavenly Doctrine” and “the Letter of the Writings” are taken to be the same. But when Doctrine is understood spiritually, it is as remote from the Letter as the light of the moon is in comparison to the light of the sun (xx). The Heavenly Doctrine understood spiritually is called the Spiritual Doctrine. This is the Doctrine we must form for ourselves for making progress in our regeneration. Spiritual Doctrine understood spiritually has light and power like the noonday sun in the summer in relation to a garden or field. We begin reformation through a natural understanding of Doctrine in its literal sentences, but by the time we complete reformation, and begin regeneration, more and more of Doctrine is now seen spiritually. In other words, our enlightenment grows in proportion to our regeneration.

The Spiritual Doctrine is the Writings understood spiritually.

To understand the Writings literally and naturally is to put up an effort as-of self in our natural-rational mind. The literal understanding of the Writings is the understanding immersed in natural-rational correspondences. This is a far higher level of thinking and understanding than the natural-sensuous correspondences in which the New Testament is written. Seventeen centuries of intellectual and scientific development intervene between the natural-sensuous correspondences of the New Testament and the natural-rational correspondences of the Writings. The natural-rational correspondences of the Letter of the Writings elevate the mind of the human race to a new level of conscious understanding and functioning. This level is the highest possible level of thinking and understanding with the natural mind. Yet it is only like the light of the moon at night when compared to the portions of the mind above the natural which are in the bright and intense light of the spiritual Sun. The spiritual topics of the Writings can be understood naturally or spiritually, and one gives us the light of the moon at night, the other gives us the light of the summer sun at noon

At first we see the Heavenly Doctrine as something outside of ourselves, something in the Letter. We take up the literal sentences into our memory and into our natural-rational understanding. Note that we do this by dint of intellectual effort and reasoning. Now that a form of the Heavenly Doctrine is in our natural-rational mind, we feel it as our own, to the extent that we also love it, not merely understand it. Once we have this natural understanding of the Heavenly Doctrine, it stays with us as we go about our daily willing and thinking, and not merely when we read the Writings. It’s as if the Writings are written in our memory and heart, rather than in a book or computer file.

We can now use the Heavenly Doctrine we have appropriated by applying it to guide our daily willing and thinking. This is part of the process of regeneration, namely, taking up a natural understanding of the Heavenly Doctrine and then applying it to guide our daily willing and thinking. This natural understanding of the Heavenly Doctrine is nothing else than the understanding of the natural-rational correspondences in which its words and expressions are written.

But the natural understanding of Doctrine does not have the power to regenerate because the natural cannot enter the spiritual, and we must be regenerated by what is spiritual entering the natural (xx).

Hence the Lord gives us enlightenment to the extent that we apply our natural understanding of Doctrine to daily willing and thinking. The spiritual entering the natural consists of applying natural-rational correspondences to our willing and thinking, an act or operation that the Lord uses to enlighten us. This effect is obtained because our willing and thinking constitute the interior level of the particular in creation, while the Doctrine in our mind constitute general principles and relations. The particular is a discrete degree above the general, as will be shown in the diagram that follows.

Only after this enlightenment has occurred, do we have a conscious perception of the Spiritual Doctrine.

This means that we have a conscious perception of spiritual-rational correspondences. It is shown later in the Chapter how this process takes place and in which anatomical portion of the mind.

As this process of enlightenment and regeneration goes on, we appropriate more and more of the Spiritual Doctrine, feeling it within us and as being ours. It will be shown below that this Spiritual Doctrine in our mind is Divine Doctrine. This is important to prevent us from appropriating the Divine. The Spiritual Doctrine is felt to be our own from intellectual effort in penetrating the Letter of the Writings. That it feels like our own, means that we are consciously conjoined to the Divine. Our love and worship of the Spiritual Doctrine is the condition the Lord waits for to effect conjunction with the individual New Church mind. When we worship the Spiritual Doctrine born in our understanding, we are not attributing divinity or infallibility to ourselves. Instead, we are acknowledging the Divine Child or Seed implanted in our mind by the Lord. This Divine Seed is Divine Truth from the Lord accommodated to the individual in a unique way. Thus, the Divine Doctrine is different with each individual, and yet they are all congruent because they are each from enlightenment and genuine charity, which are only from the Lord.

The Divine Doctrine in one New Church mind may not be recognized by another New Church mind, since recognition or enlightenment is dependent on the regeneration series each must undergo in their time. Therefore if there were a political attempt to impose the Divine Doctrine of one individual on another, the Church would be destroyed and the Spiritual Doctrine would be consummated and vanish. Only the Letter of the Writings, not the spiritual or internal meaning, can be used for Church management issues. Since the Letter can be turned in a variety of endless directions, the result is that the Church remains stable by proliferating culturally, so that each Church specific is run according to its selection and interpretation of the Letter.

Whenever a new view arises about the Letter that does not agree with the existing views in a Church, the members with the new view will form a separate Church so as not to experience opposition. In this way, the Church proliferates according to its cultural views and selections and interpretations of the Letter of the Writings. Every Church specific, if charity is the primary in it and faith its secondary, receives from the Lord Divine Doctrine by means of enlightenment of its members, in accordance with each member’s progress in the regeneration series they each must undergo.

The location of this new spiritual understanding of Doctrine is not in our natural-rational mind, for the spiritual cannot be in the natural, but only above it or within it, in a discrete degree higher than the natural. It is necessary therefore that the Lord create a new mind within the natural-rational.

This new mind is called the interior-natural mind and its operation is nothing else than spiritual-rational correspondences. This is the level of understanding and thinking of the angelic spirits have who live in the First Heaven. The new interior-natural mind now gives us the capacity to have a spiritual consciousness that was not possible before. Spiritual consciousness is the conscious perception of spiritual-rational correspondences. The spiritual understanding of the Heavenly Doctrine is located not in the external natural mind but in the interior-natural mind. This is the level of thinking and reasoning that serves for our regeneration.

We cannot be regenerated by natural-rational correspondences.

Hence it is that the Letter kills but the spiritual sense gives life. The spiritual sense is nothing else than the perception of spiritual-rational correspondences. This perception is called enlightenment. This Chapter presents methods for extracting spiritual-rational correspondences from natural-rational correspondences.

The study of the Letter of the Writings and the consequent natural understanding of the Heavenly Doctrine, is our First Education, or reformation. The application of the Letter in our mind to our daily willing and thinking, leads to the spiritual understanding of the Heavenly Doctrine, and is our Second Education, or enlightenment. But there is one more step: We must then confirm this spiritual understanding of the Heavenly Doctrine by means of the Letter of the Writings, and this can be called our Third Education, which is regeneration itself. Thus, starting from the Letter, we end with the Letter. These three steps are required for every regenerating New Church mind.

The interior-natural mind responds to three discrete levels of Doctrine. These three levels mirror by correspondence the Doctrine that is in the three heavens.

As we regenerate, the Lord opens the unconscious spiritual mind more and more, with more and more interior truths of Doctrine that He implants as a Divine Seed in a Divine Garden or Eden. This is the return of the human race to the pristine celestial sate called the Garden of Eden, which in the East. This biological activity in the unconscious spiritual mind results in a corresponding activity in the interior-natural mind, which is conscious. By this mechanism the Lord gives us conscious perception of the spiritual forms of Doctrine in the three heavens.

Our unconscious spiritual mind being built up by the Lord during regeneration is the mind that lives and is conscious in heaven in the afterlife. The discrete level to which our unconscious spiritual mind is opened determines which of the three heavens we enter for eternal life. This depends on our regeneration. Those who suffer themselves to be regenerated to the celestial level, enter the highest or Third Heaven.

The interior-natural mind is therefore the organ of consciousness for the understanding of Spiritual Doctrine. It is the organ that contains spiritual-rational correspondences and gives us conscious perception of them. Note that the content of the interior-natural mind originates from the unconscious spiritual mind, which is spiritual of celestial origin, hence from the Divine.

Both the unconscious spiritual mind and the conscious interior-natural mind are from celestial origin. Therefore everything in them is Divine, just as everything in the Garden of Eden is Divine, and everything in heaven is Divine (xx).

There is nothing in them from self or the world. This is in contrast with the content of the natural-rational mind which originates from as-of self effort and intelligence. This is why the natural understanding of the Heavenly Doctrine is from self-intelligence, but its spiritual understanding is from heaven and the Lord. The Spiritual Doctrine in our mind is nothing but the spiritual-rational correspondences in our perception from the interior-natural mind. Consequently, the Spiritual Doctrine in our mind is Divine Doctrine.

The First Education is for reformation. The interior-natural mind is not yet opened in this phase because our understanding of Doctrine is not yet spiritual. We undergo reformation by means of the truths of the Letter understood naturally. When we begin our regeneration, then for the first time the Lord enlightens us with a more interior perception of Doctrine. This is the beginning of our Second Education. The Lord now creates an interior-natural mind within our natural-rational mind. At first, only the lowest discrete level is built up in the new interior-natural mind. This corresponds to the spiritual understanding of Doctrine by the natural angels in the First Heaven. Then, as we confirm the spiritual understanding in the Letter of the Writings, we obtain our Third Education. Now the interior-natural mind is opened to its second degree that corresponds to the understanding of Doctrine possessed by the spiritual angels of the Second Heaven.

In old age, the New Church mind enters into the third degree of the interior-natural mind, which is the level of understanding of Doctrine possessed by the celestial angels of the highest or Third Heaven. This level is discussed in Volume 4 (in preparation).

2. A Diagram Showing The Formation Of The New Church Mind

The diagram shows the topical organization of this book. It represents the operations of regeneration by means of the Writings. The formation of the New Church mind is what’s called regeneration, hence the title “A Man Of The Field” which refers to the spiritual understanding of Doctrine required for undergoing regeneration.

The diagram depicts nine categories of dualities arranged in an ennead matrix of nine cells (3x3). There are three levels (I, II, III) within each of the three operations, or class of activity, described as Volume 1, 2, and 3 (Reformation, Enlightenment, Regeneration).

Thus, Reformation operates at three levels of thinking: Knowledge (I), Understanding (II), and Perception (III). So does Enlightenment, and also Regeneration.

These nine dualities represent nine steps we go through to install the New Church mind in ourselves. It is the process of regeneration described in the Writings. I will discuss each of the nine installation steps following the discussion on reading the columns and rows of the ennead matrix.

3. The Operation Of Reformation, Enlightenment, Regeneration

Reformation (Volume 1) is the struggle against nonduality in the New Church mind. Nonduality is the denial of duality. Nonduality is also any duality perceived on a continuous scale between the two elements, instead of a discrete degree difference. At the level of thinking called “knowledge level” (I), nonduality is replaced by the fundamental duality in the Writings called the “internal man” vs. the “external man.” This is the same as the duality of the spiritual world and the natural world. This class of dualities is installed in our external mind and constitute the external scientifics of the Letter of the Writings. At the second level of thinking “understanding” (II), we install the class of dualities that contrasts the natural-rational mind vs. the interior-natural mind. This is the same as acknowledging the difference between natural-rational correspondences of the Letter and spiritual-rational correspondences of the spiritual sense within the literal. The third level in the process of reformation is called “perception” (III), by which we install the class of dualities that relate to our perception of the particular within the general. This is the highest understanding in reformation because we can then see how Divine Doctrine applies to our willing and thinking moment by moment. These three levels correspond to the three educations mentioned above. Please refer again to the diagram above.

Enlightenment (Volume 2) is the opening by the Lord of the interior-natural mind. Level I thinking is represented in the diagram by a class of dualities represented by the idea of the “spiritual sense existing within the natural sense.” At the second level of enlightenment or thinking (II), we install the class of dualities represented by the distinction between natural-rational correspondences of the Letter and spiritual-rational correspondences extracted from the Letter. At the third level of enlightenment (III) we install the class of dualities represented by the Spiritual Doctrine that is extracted from the literal and built into a coherent rational system of principles. Please refer again to the diagram above.

Regeneration (Volume 3) is the application of enlightenment to reveal our willing and thinking and to compel ourselves into proper alignment with the Spiritual Doctrine in our mind. At level I, regeneration is merely the knowledge from the Letter that we must undergo reformation in adult life, followed by regeneration until the end. At level II, regeneration is the understanding that the church in our mind must be a heaven in miniature. No willing and thinking must be left standing that is not in obedience and conformity with the Heavenly Doctrine understood spiritually. At level III, regeneration is the development of conjugial love. And example is the Doctrine of the Wife, discussed in Volume 3. Please refer again to the diagram above.

So far we discussed the diagram vertically by operation (reformation, enlightenment, regeneration). Now if you look at the diagram horizontally you will get a picture of the overall operation for each level. The three “levels” refer to the three levels of thinking and reasoning: the level of knowledge (I), the level of understanding (II) and the level of perception (III), as described in the Writings (xx). But reading the diagram horizontally gives us a specific perspective on the role of these three levels within each operation.

For example: What is the difference between the knowledge level of thinking between reformation and enlightenment?

The diagram answers this question with a contrast between, on the one hand, “internal man/external man” duality (reformation level I), and on the other hand, the “spiritual sense/natural sense” duality (enlightenment level I). In other words, the idea that the spiritual sense is to be extracted from the natural sense is an enlightenment step, while the idea that the internal man rules the external man from an invisible world that is a discrete degree above it, is a reformation step. This notion is discussed further below when the nine installation steps are described individually.

Take a second example: “What do spiritual-rational correspondences correspond to?”

The diagram answers this question with a contrast between, on the one hand, “spiritual-rational correspondences,” and on the other, the “Spiritual Doctrine.” Both are operations of enlightenment. The diagram shows that understanding the duality “spiritual-rational” within natural-rational” is the foundation for level III, namely perceiving the Spiritual Doctrine. This duality is further discussed below in the installation steps. But for now, you can see that spiritual-rational correspondences are at a lower level of thinking (II) than the Spiritual Doctrine (III). This means that the spiritual-rational correspondences in the understanding point to, or refer to, that which is above themselves. And this is the Spiritual Doctrine. In the same way you can see that the Letter of the Writings is the external portion of the Spiritual Doctrine and the two cannot be equated since they form a duality.

Take a third example: “What is the essential difference between the natural-rational mind and the interior-natural mind?”

The diagram answers this question with a contrast between, on the one hand, “interior-natural mind” and on the other, the “natural-rational mind.” This contrast is installed in the operation of reformation at level II. The diagram shows that the interior-natural mind is a discrete degree above the natural-rational mind. Above or within in terms of discrete degrees always means superior (xx). The way in which the interior-natural mind is superior to the natural-rational mind is shown by adjacent dualities. For instance, going horizontally on the matrix, the interior-natural mind in reformation (level II) becomes the containant for spiritual-rational correspondences in enlightenment (II). This indicates that the opening of the interior-natural mind during reformation paves the way for understanding the duality between interior-natural correspondences and natural-rational correspondences. Upon understanding this duality depends the ability to perceive the Spiritual Doctrine (level III). There is therefore an indirect but determinative relationship between understanding the interior-natural mind and perceiving the Spiritual Doctrine. These matters are discussed in more detail later in the Chapter.

Take a fourth example: “What is the relationship between perceiving the Spiritual Doctrine and understanding what is heaven?”

This question contrasts “enlightenment level III” with “regeneration level II.” The diagram answers this question with a contrast between, on the one hand, the “Spiritual Doctrine” and on the hand, “Heaven.” The diagram shows that both are interior elements of their duality. Their external elements relate to each other as “Letter of the Writings” relates to “Church on earth.” To express these relations verbally we would say that the Church on earth is the external natural vessel for heaven, when all is in order from creation. Similarly, the Letter of the Writings is a natural vessel for the Spiritual Doctrine. However, these relations vary for each operation.

In the operation of enlightenment, the relation between the spiritual and the natural is by means of the perception (level III) that the natural-rational correspondences of the Writings have a spiritual-rational correspondence to which they refer from within. Consequently, it is the perception that the Spiritual Doctrine is not in the Letter but within it, and must be extracted from the Letter by appropriate methods.

In the operation of regeneration, the relationship between the interior and external is defined by a perception (level III) of conjugial love within the marriage of regenerating couples. Therefore our understanding (level II) of heaven is the result of this perception since understanding (level II) is always the result of perception (level III) (xx).

As you can see the ennead diagram has powerful abilities to organize a lot of ideas from the Writings. You can practice deriving questions by picking a contrast, as I have done above in the four examples. Then, giving an answer by invoking the neighbor dualities. You can move around vertically, horizontally, and diagonally, each movement defining the type of question being asked and its answer.

See Note 24 for more information on the amazing properties of enneads that I have discovered over the years.

4. The Nine Installation Steps

Starting with level I at the bottom, you can see the duality external man / internal man. This is the first installation step. Notice the two arrows. The arrow on the right pointing downward represents the order of creation. In this case the internal man was created to rule the external man, and gradually does so, as we are regenerated. The reverse arrow on the left pointing upward represents the order of appearances. In the appearances of our biography it seems that the internal man is discovered by the external man. For instance we might read this in the Writings at which time we say to ourselves: “OK, I have an internal man of which I’m unconscious. This internal part of myself is called a heaven in miniature (xx) because that portion of my spirit or mind is actually in heaven with angels” (cf. xx).

From this we live the appearance that the external man discovers the existence of the internal man. When this appearance is taken for reality, the internal man cannot descend into the external man and heaven remains unattainable and distant as long as we remain in that state of mind.

The two arrows must work together to achieve functionality of the Divine operation.

The downward arrow represents the dominion of the internal over the external. Heaven then rules that person, and the individual is then in heaven already. The upward arrow represents the resistance we put up to obeying the Doctrine in our mind. It is our unregenerate state. Understanding this duality moves us into level II of reformation. It is the first step up in our reformation, which begins at some point in adulthood with the knowledge from the Writings that we must undergo reformation by subduing the external man and place him in obedience to the internal man. Acknowledging this process allows us to begin reformation but in order to progress we must take the second installation step.

The first installation step that begins reformation (Volume 1), is our acknowledgement from the Letter of the Writings that the internal man is superior even though invisible to the external man. Until reformation we were in our unregenerate state and we believed the internal/external contrast in a natural way. The contrast in our mind was a nonduality created by the idea of a continuum that stretches between the internal and the external of our mind. We thought of it like we think about the internal wall of the heart and its external wall. They are different along a continuum of muscle-cartilage combinations. Both the external wall and the internal wall of the heart belong to the same specialty in medicine, and the same techniques are used for managing both during surgery and after. This is a nonduality because the internal and external portions of the heart are made of similar fibers and protein molecules. They are at the same discrete level.

But not so for the internal man and the external man—they are at discrete levels relative to each other. The internal man can see the external man, but the external man cannot see the internal man (xx). Their relationship and interaction is by correspondence only since they are in two separate realms of existence. Reformation begins when we acknowledge that the relation is a discrete duality. Then for the first time we can accept the idea that the external man did not discover the internal man, but it is the internal man that revealed himself to the internal man. This new acknowledgment completes the paths of the two arrows and renders the duality functional, allowing the second step up.

Prior to the beginning of reformation sometime in adult life, we have the Letter of the Writings in our understanding and we take the literal meaning to be the spiritual meaning, especially when we had to work hard to finally understand some passage or see a relation between a collection of passages. We equate “hard to understand” with “deeper meaning,” and then we equate “deeper meaning” with “spiritual meaning.” Meanwhile, our thinking is immersed in the natural-rational correspondences of the Letter. We worship the Letter as one worships the Lord’s Body buried in a tomb hewn out of rocks.

But when we acknowledge that the internal man reveals himself to the external man, we can begin to understand this as a scientific or medical process of the growth of the human mind. This new understanding is the second installation step, as the diagram indicates. The third installation step is above understanding into perception. We are in this final phase of reformation we can perceive the particular within the general. This means: when we apply the Letter to our willing and thinking. Our willing and thinking is the particular out of which the general is constructed. Another way to say this is that our reformation is complete when we perceive the duality of the particular within the general. The general refers to the general principles and laws of Doctrine that we have in our mind from the Letter. When our reformation is completed (installation step III), our mind is then operating differently from before. We were not able to perceive how the Letter applied to our willing and thinking. We were not able to see the particular within the Letter, only its general on the exterior. Yet the general is for the sake of the particular, just as the external is for the sake of the interior.

Looking at the diagram again:

Installation step 4 begins the operation of enlightenment (Volume 2).

This step is the acknowledgement of the duality between the spiritual sense and the natural sense. Until this first step of enlightenment we had believed that the natural sense of the Letter of the Writings is the same as the spiritual sense of the Old and New Testaments. This point of view cannot see a duality between them in discrete degrees, but only as a nonduality contrast, or continuum within the same degree. The first step of enlightenment therefore comes when we acknowledge that the Writings are written in pure correspondences.

The second step of enlightenment is installation step 5. The diagram shows that this involves understanding the duality of spiritual-rational correspondences within natural-rational correspondences. We obtain this understanding when we practice reading the Letter of the Writings with substitutions for parts from another part of the Writings. This technique and its enlightening consequences are described later in the Chapter.

The final step in enlightenment is installation step 6.

The diagram shows that this is the perception (III) of the duality Spiritual Doctrine within the Letter of the Writings. This is the highest step of enlightenment when our perception is elevated to heavenly light and we perceive spiritually like the angels do, though by means of natural correspondences, ever higher and more discretely representative. When we are fully enlightened and can perceive the Spiritual Doctrine within the Letter, we are at last fully prepared for the operation of regeneration (Volume 3).

Note the two arrows again in installation step 6, or the final phase of enlightenment (III). From the order of creation, the Spiritual Doctrine creates a suitable natural vessel for itself called the Word. This creative cause-effect relation is represented by the right arrow pointing downward. But in biographical appearance, the order is reversed. It appears that the Letter comes to us first, and that we study it for many years, believing that our increasing understanding is the spiritual sense that we penetrate. This is represented by the left arrow pointing upward. But as soon as both arrows become functional, the process is completed. In this case, the Spiritual Doctrine is no longer seen as something we infer and figure out, but something we derive or extract from the Letter because it is located within the Letter. It is a mining operation rather than a discovery and invention operation. And there are definite rules and techniques to be applied for the mining operation to be effective. This Chapter describes these methods of orderly an legitimate extraction of the Spiritual Doctrine from the Letter.

Installation step 7 is the first step of regeneration.

As the diagram shows, it is the acknowledgement of a discrete duality between reformation and regeneration. Prior to this first step, we believe that we have already been regenerating since childhood or adolescence. This is a nonduality notion of the unregenerate mind. We knew before that there was a distinction between reformation and regeneration. But we did not understand this relationship spiritually, only naturally. But now, we acknowledge it as a discrete duality, so that we can recognize the task that lies ahead. The task of regeneration has not begun until the tasks of reformation and enlightenment have been completed. Only when we perceive the Spiritual Doctrine within the Letter can we acknowledge the discrete duality between reformation and regeneration. We acknowledge reformation to be the external part of our work, while regeneration is the internal part. The external part has to do with the understanding and the dualities therein, while the internal part has to do with the will and our infernal delights.

The second step of regeneration is installation step 8.

The diagram shows this is the understanding (II) of the duality of heaven within the Church on earth. You can see from the diagram that this understanding depends on the duality between spiritual-rational correspondences and natural-rational correspondences established earlier (panning left to enlightenment, level II). We know from the Writings that heaven is the Grand Human and that nothing can be inducted into that Divine Form but what is genuinely Human, that is, what is from the Lord. There is a purification process that we must undergo if our mind is to be a Church that is tied to heaven, thus a Church in which there is an internal worship. Regeneration is the process of purification by which the Lord brings our awareness to evil delights we cleave to, thus giving us the opportunity to reject them by turning our face toward Him. Thus we can desist from the evil delights, and at last hold them in aversion and detest them. Then the Lord can admit us into the innocence of wisdom in old age (see Volume 4). This is the celestial mind, the Church on earth.

The final step of regeneration is installation step 9.

The diagram shows that this is the perception (III) of the duality conjugial love within marriage. Prior to this final phase of our regeneration we could not perceive a discrete degree between the external of our marriage an its internal, which is conjugial love. Volume 3 discusses the Doctrine of the Wife which is the central method for entering the last phase of one’s regeneration.

After completion of the nine installation steps, the New Church mind is fully regenerated. Then begins a new form of regeneration that does not depend on combat, as before. This is the first time that we have become fully human, as a celestial mind on earth. It is called the innocence of wisdom in old age (volume 4—in preparation).

5. Doctrine Is The Reception Of Spiritual Information Packets

Prior to regeneration we equate “spiritual Doctrine of the Word” with “the Letter of the Writings.” After reformation, the Lords creates an interior-natural mind within our external rational understanding where we have stored up the Letter of the Doctrine from studying the Writings. IN this interior-natural mind we con consciously see the correspondences of the Doctrine in a spiritual way. This is our spiritual understanding of the spiritual Doctrine located in our interior natural mind. Now we can see the difference between the Doctrine in the Letter and the spiritual Doctrine laid down within the Letter in our mind. Now we can see that there is an inexhaustible source of interior spiritual truths within the Writings. We can understand that the Letter of the Writings is a finite set of Numbers and sentences. They have been indexed and translated many times. There is a definite and finite number, even if we go down to the letters of each word. How then can there be an endless collection of spiritual truths in the Writings, to serve the entire humanity of the entire future ahead to eternity?

We can see the answer as soon as we have established for ourselves the idea that the spiritual Doctrine is spiritual, made of a collection of spiritual truths. And right away we can see that there is no limit to the number of spiritual truths. Hence we can see that the endless collection o few truths for the human race form the Letter of the Writings will come by enlightenment as the Letter is known and honored and applied to one’s life situation.

6. Biology Of The Spiritual Doctrine

The development of Doctrine can be thought of objectively and scientifically in terms of spiritual psychobiology, spiritual neurology, or spiritual agriculture. The mind is an organ made of spiritual fibers that must be grown into a bulk and into a gyration or coiling process, similar to the brain’s fissures with its billions of synapses coiled in coherent networks called “cell assemblies” in modern physiology. But instead of physical food and caloric energy, the mind uses spiritual packets called “truths” and “truths falsified.” These two kinds of information packets are coiled opposite to one another, and have opposite consequences on our life.

Spiritual freedom refers to our self-controlled access to these information packets. Whichever type we love, that we access, that is, streams into us from heaven or hell, which builds up the fibers of the mind into clusters of coherent coiled shapes. In order to distinguish between the two types that enter externally into our rational mind, we must filter them through our reasoning process. The accuracy of our reasoning process depends on our motive. We can perform the rational analysis between true and false information packets, in order to keep our inherited delights. In this case, our reasoning process will be necessarily biased and false, leading us to take falses for truths, and truths for falses. This is a disastrous course that leads all the way to hell because only truth leads away from hell. Or, we can perform the rational analysis between true and false information packets, in order to shed our inherited delights. This leads to heaven because all inherited delights are ties to hell and shunning them turns us toward heaven.

But what would lead us to shed our inherited delights?

The Writings teach that there is only one thing that can convince us to freely give up our inherited and acquired evils. And that is the Doctrine in our mind from the Writings (xx). If we love the Doctrine because it is from the Lord and is the Lord (xx), we will work daily to acquire it into our mind. And if we continue to love it in our mind, we will hold it up in the air as a brass serpent (xx), and guide our steps in its light. Every moment we take a step in our mind, we are advancing the spiritual fibers further into hell, or further into heaven. Every act of willing or desiring, every idea and conclusion of our thinking, is each a spiritual act that coils the fibers of our mind into heaps tending to hell, or beautiful networks of coherence and rationality that reach toward heaven, and touch it, thus becoming part of it. In one day there are 1440 minutes and 86,400 seconds. Think of every second as involving at least one spiritual act, but usually many more, if one thinks about it from sudden memory (see Chapter 8 Section 1). Clearly then, every day builds a considerable amount of spiritual fibers in our mind, and these are permanent installations!

It’s obvious that we must therefore have a way of filtering and monitoring these thousands of spiritual acts we perform by the hour every day! Every single one is formed by an information packet that comes to our natural mind either from hell or from heaven. And since all these billions and trillions of fibers that we inherit are from hell, we’ve got a big job on our hands if we are going to get to heaven! Of course we could not even begin to do this from our own power and intelligence, since we are born spiritually insane, and power we have none (xx). So the Lord has made a way for us. He will supply the motive power, moment by moment, and He will supply the sanity of thinking moment by moment. The Lord cannot do this directly, like we do agriculture on earth, but only spiritually, through our own willing and thinking acts. To the extent that we compel ourselves to do our willing and thinking acts in accordance with His Divine Truth, to that extent we can be reformed and regenerated. He has given us this Divine Truth in information packets called Doctrine in their aggregate, and He has placed them in the Word of His Second Coming. This is the Word of the Writings, which we must love as we love Him, for Divine Truth is Him (xx).

By loving these packets of truth in the Letter of the Writings, we imbibe them from the literal language into our external mind, called the natural-rational, and then simultaneously, the Lord, from within, puts the spiritual content into our spiritual mind, and by correspondence into our interior-natural mind. Now we have the living truth of Doctrine in us. Its external part is in the literal meaning of it in our natural-rational mind. This conscious understanding of truth from the Writings comes to us from the external natural world in the form of a book. Within this conscious truth, the Lord implants spiritual truths from within. This takes place in the spiritual mind in an unconscious way. But the unconscious activity becomes conscious by correspondence in our conscious interior-natural mind, as explained.

7. Diagram Of The Discrete Levels In The Mind and the Writings

The mind is created into discrete degrees or levels. Each upper level interacts with the level below itself by means of correspondences. The bottom level of the natural mind is corporeal and it is not active with angels in heaven (xx). But while we are in the physical body, the corporeal mind provides us with the ability to memorize the Letter. Children are very good at this and can be taught to recite large chunks of the Word, and to learn it by song and play. But this level of thinking does not allow them to understand a single sentence or rational concept. Above this is the natural-sensuous mind which allows us to interpret the surface layer or meaning of the Letter. Anyone with education can paraphrase many sentences in the Writings, or translate them into another language. However this sensuous level of thinking and understanding does not allow one to see general applications or see the equivalence between different passages, or how they relate to one another and build on a theme or principle. These activities can only go on in the natural-rational mind. You can see form the diagram that it is the highest portion of the external natural mind. Above this is no longer the external natural mind but its interior, called the interior-natural mind.

Note this important fact: While the natural-rational mind is built up by our own studious effort at figuring out the Writings, the interior-natural mind is activated solely by the Lord.

This means that the interior-natural mind is the consciousness of the Holy Spirit with us. It is the physiological organ of the mind that provides for the dwelling of the Divine within our conscious awareness.

Note from the diagram that the interior-natural mind is activated by the Lord simultaneously with our mental activity of rationally figuring out a sentence in the Writings. This is the process of enlightenment from the Lord as one reads or reflects upon the Letter. It is provided by the Lord for the sake of our regeneration, for without this enlightenment we could not perceive the spiritual sense, and without perceiving the spiritual sense no one can be regenerated. This is the physiological process the Lord provides and there is no other method by which to be regenerated and saved.

The spiritual meaning that is in our interior mind is from the Lord. The natural-rational meaning that is in our external mind comes from our intellectual effort to understand the literal of the Writings. Together the external truth springs into life and becomes a living truth. Living truths is what heaven is made of, therefore we need them to enter eternal life in heaven (xx). The living spiritual truths which form heaven in our mind is called the City, the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly Doctrine (xx). This is the spiritual truths we must have in our mind in order to filter the packets and arrange them in the heavenly order, until at last, our mind is a heaven in miniature (xx). Without this spiritual Doctrine in our mind, nothing can happen but the inevitable slide down to hell. Our spiritual acts of willing and thinking all day long will not be filtered by truth, and in the absence of truth there is only hell forever (xx).

Keep in mind that in order to perceive the spiritual sense of the Letter of the Writings, two activities must go on simultaneously. One is located in the interior-natural mind and the other in the natural-rational mind. Prior to reformation our interior-natural mind was not activated by the Lord. Our consciousness of the spiritual topics discussed by the Letter was non-existent. We only had a natural understanding of the spiritual topics discussed in the literal sensed of the Writings. But after reformation the Lord is able to activate our interior-natural mind. Now when our natural-rational reflects on the meaning of a sentence in the Letter, our interior-natural is also activated, giving us a spiritual consciousness of the topics in the sentence. Now we can perceive the spiritual sense within the Letter of the Writings. The activation of the interior-natural mind is called enlightenment.

When we study the Writings in order to form spiritual Doctrine in the mind, we do so from a desire to be obedient to the Lord’s order and to reject all the order we naturally prefer. This as of-self self-compulsion is the discipline and effort into which the Lord can infuse spiritual-rational light, which is the understanding of interior truths. But it’s an unending process (AC 9334). So we must continue the daily discipline by modifying the Doctrine of life day by day, to reflect the new more interior light we receive from the Lord. Now in this new light, we must modify our willing and thinking to agree with the new light, which gives a higher and purer perception. This is a cumulative process so that we grow spiritually every day., This regimen or discipline requires that we turn to the Lord for power to overcome the old way of willing and thinking. Now even more interior light can be given by the Lord, and this continues to eternity (AC 9410). For unless we improved every day to eternity, we could not be truly human and truly happy (xx).

Note that the ever spiraling light to higher or more interior consciousness is not a sensation of ecstasy but a rational consciousness. It is a new rationality in the understanding. No truths reside in the will but only in the understanding (AE 724). So it is the understanding that receives higher and higher consciousness to eternity. Charity cannot be exercised without Doctrine (xx). It is Doctrine that leads to charity, and from this charity, we receive new, more interior Doctrine. Charity does not save unless it is from Doctrine (xx). Charity is the primary, and Doctrine the secondary. Doctrine without charity cannot save (xx). Doctrine as primary and charity as secondary, cannot save. But Doctrine that leads to charity, from which new Doctrine is obtained, does save. It is not charity that saves by means of Doctrine, but Doctrine from charity saves (xx).

8. The Spiritual Doctrine is Heaven and the Lord In Us

Everything that proceeds from the Lord is called spiritual. And since these truths and goods cannot be received by man unless he believes them and does them, it is added, which are of faith and life from the Word. To live from the Word is to live from the Lord, for the Lord is in the Word, yea, He is the Word.

This New Church, truly Christian, which at this day is being established by the Lord, will endure to eternity, as is proved from the Word of both Testaments; also it was foreseen from the creation of the world; and it will be the crown of the four preceding churches, because it will have true faith and true charity. (CORONIS 0)

The New Church mentioned here refers to the Heavenly Doctrine because the New Church is from the Writings. The New Church from the Writings is called “the True Christian religion (see TCR). The New Church mind contains the Heavenly Doctrine and is shaped by it. As the passage indicates, this Doctrine “will endure to eternity,” which means that no new written revelation will ever be given again. The Writings are to last forever. It is the New Word of the Second Coming through which the New Heaven was created. All the old heavens were recreated into this New Heaven by means of the Word of the Second Coming. Henceforth for all times the Writings will be the sole source for Doctrine that the human race needs to be regenerated and saved.

Heaven is in our understanding by means of the spiritual understanding of Doctrine. The Lord’s good inflows into this understanding. It is called the Heavenly Doctrine because heaven is in the Doctrine, as the Lord Himself is the Doctrine (xx). And the all of heaven is the Lord (xx). The true human begins in heaven in the celestial mind, and this mind is made out of spiritual truths gathered together in the Doctrine that we have appropriated for ourselves in our understanding. The truths of the Second Coming creates the New Heavens in our mind. This is a rational heaven made of spiritual-rational truths. Only by acquiring spiritual-rational truths from the Writings, can heaven be formed in our mind, and in no other way.

Note carefully that it is not the literal language of the Writings that makes the heavenly Doctrine in our mind, but its spiritual content available from within, in the spiritual mind:

Natural truths, which are the truths of the sense of the letter of the Word, are not the very truths of heaven, but are appearances of them; and appearances of truth encompass, enclose, and contain the truths of heaven, which are genuine truths, and cause them to be in connection and order and to act together, like the cardiac and pulmonary organs with their coverings and ribs, as has been said above; and when these truths are held in connection and in order they are holy, and not till then. This the sense of the letter of our Word does by means of the appearances of truth of which its ultimate consists; and this is why that sense is the holy Divine Itself and the sanctuary. (AE 1088:[4])

When we learn the truths of the Writings, we first have to put them into our external rational mind, which is natural, not spiritual. But once they are there, they can be elevated into spiritual truths when the Lord enlightens us to perceive these spiritual truths. And the Lord enlightens us only when we struggle to arrange our willing and thinking to conform to this literal understanding in the natural mind. In that struggle to apply the truths to our acts all day long, is the enlightenment that constitutes the spiritual Doctrine in our mind. This is what saves since this is what we must acquire to live in heaven. Here is the Lord’s warning:

But he is greatly mistaken who separates appearances of truth from genuine truths and calls these appearances holy by themselves and from themselves, and not the sense of the letter holy by genuine truths and from them and together with them. He separates these who sees only the sense of the letter and does not explore its meaning, as those do who do not read the Word from doctrine. The "cherubim" mean in the Word a guard and protection that the holy things of heaven be not violated, and that the Lord be approached only through love; consequently these signify the sense of the letter of the Word, because that is what guards and protects. It guards and protects in this manner that man can think and speak according to the appearances of truth so long as he is well-disposed, simple, and as it were an infant; but he must take heed not to so confirm appearances as to destroy the genuine truths in the heavens. (AE 1088:[5])

Note in this passage something is said about those who do not read the Writings from Doctrine. Doctrine here refers to the spiritual understanding of the literal sentences. The Doctrine understood naturally is called “appearances” of truth. When we are in that state, which is at the start of our reformation in adult life, we read the Writings and try to make sense of it by means of our own intelligence and reasoning. In this state, we “see only the sense of the letter and do not explore its meaning.” This refers to the spiritual meaning within the natural meaning. We do not explore the spiritual meaning in what we read because we do not believe there is a spiritual meaning in the Writings before we begin to regenerate.

The idea that the Writings contain a spiritual meaning beneath the letter can only come to us when we acknowledge it as the Word, just like the Word of the Old and New Testaments. Once we acknowledge this fully, without hedging, we begin to substitute in our mind “the Writings” wherever we see “the Word” as we read the Writings. The minute we start doing this, we begin to see some of the spiritual meaning within the letter. This is the result of enlightenment from the Lord. The Lord works with our motive for doing this substitution. To the extent that we do the substitution because we love the idea that the Writings are the primary Word for the New Church mind, to that extent the Lord intensifies the enlightenment and allows us to see more interior truths. The more interior the truths we see within the letter, the more there is enlightenment, and the closer we are to the celestial angels who live in the spiritual truths of the Writings. But, as explained frequently, this enlightenment is proportional to the extent to which we apply our understanding of Doctrine to our life.

It is very important to realize that striving to be a good man and doing good to the neighbor and country, are not sufficient to effect reformation and regeneration (xx). Only through Doctrine can we be reformed and regenerated. This is how the Lord created the New Heavens out of the old, by means of new spiritual truths He brought to the angels in the Word of His Second Coming. As the angels accepted and loved these new truths about the Divine Human, they appropriated them to themselves, and in these higher truths they entered the New Heavens. The New Heavens were built by the Lord out of these new spiritual truths that were in the angels from the Writings. The Lord does everything by means of Divine Truth from His Divine Love. Divine Truth is the same as the spiritual Doctrine, as accommodated to each individual’s unique understanding. When the spiritual Doctrine is in our understanding, it is the Lord who put it there. It is not possible to perceive the spiritual Doctrine except from the Lord’s immediate enlightenment. Clearly then, the spiritual Doctrine is only from the Lord, and therefore is the Lord with us, dwelling in our understanding of His Divine Truth.

As we ponder these things there is a certain fear or hesitation: What is someone claims to have enlightenment from the Lord and promulgates a spiritual Doctrine that is from himself, hence false. How would we distinguish between the false and the true Doctrine? The answer is that the spiritual Doctrine is only from enlightenment in the understanding, and as soon as you try to write down or describe it in natural language, all you get is a natural view of it. The spiritual Doctrine cannot be expressed in a natural language, hence there is never the danger that someone’s claim to enlightenment would influence our own thinking. We can read or reflect on the literal statements of the spiritual Doctrine this man claims to have from the Lord. But the literal and natural sentences do not give a spiritual view of the spiritual Doctrine, only a natural view.

You can see that this is also the case with the Heavenly Doctrine. In Arcana Coelestia (AC) we read numerous descriptions of the spiritual sense of words and sentences in the Old Testament. We can be told that woman in the Word means Church, or that man means faith or truth, or that Jacob represents the external mind, or that blood signifies spiritual truth or the falsification of spiritual truth, and so on. These correspondences are explained and these explanations are about spiritual truths, but only as seen from a natural perspective. A spiritual perspective on these spiritual truths cannot be obtained from the literal descriptions. This spiritual perspective on spiritual truths cannot reside in the natural mind, and we are not conscious of what is in our interior or spiritual mind (xx). The only way we can see the spiritual truths is not form the literal, but within the literal. And this perception within the literal is only there when we are enlightened by the Lord as we read the Writings. Let us try to write down the content of this enlightenment, and we have nothing left in the sentences but a natural perspective.

Note carefully that this enlightenment can only take place with the literal of the Writings and in no other way. The Lord cannot enlighten us with spiritual truths from any other work, but only from His Word. Only the Word contains spiritual truths (xx). For the New Church mind only the Writings contain spiritual truths. The Old and New Testaments are also the Word, but for the New Church mind they can only be understood from the perspective of the Writings. Hence the Writings are the primary Word for the New Church mind.

The Lord is able to regenerate us by means o the spiritual Doctrine in our understanding. By methods unbeknownst to us, He adjoins good to the spiritual truths we acquired as-of self into our understanding by studying the literal of the Word. Therefore gathering the spiritual Doctrine in our mind is the primary means by which we are regenerated. But this applies only to the extent that we shun evils in our willing and falsities in our thinking. If we fail to do this, the enlightened understanding falls back to the level of the unregenerate will, where it dies, and becomes purely natural, which in itself is dead (xx). It is a stillborn spiritual Doctrine, never getting a breath of life. This breath of life is our shunning evils because they are sins against the Divine Truth. When good is adjoined by the Lord, we become a genuine human being, a celestial mind, seeing the spiritual within the natural and willing and thinking accordingly.

9. Why The Spiritual Doctrine In Our Mind Must Be A Divine Doctrine

This clearly says that to live from the Writings is to live from the Lord and that He is the Writings. The Writings teach that they cannot be understood without Doctrine drawn from its Letter (xx). Note that Doctrine has to be drawn out, which means that Doctrine is not the same as the Letter. Recall that the Letter of the Writings in a book or computer file is not what’s meant when regeneration is discussed in the Writings. The Letter of the Writings referred to is the literal meaning of the sentences that we have studied and understood in a rational way. Therefore the Letter of the Divine Truth now exists laid down in our natural mind. At first it is laid down in our sensuous mind, but then as we grow more in intellectual ability, the Literal is laid down in our natural-rational mind. This is the Letter we must think of when discussing regeneration, for only when it is in the understanding can the Letter serve for our regeneration and salvation.

i The Word cannot be understood without doctrine.

ii. Doctrine must be drawn from the sense of the letter of the Word.

iii. But the Divine truth which must be of doctrine appears to none but those who are in enlightenment from the Lord. (SS 50)

These three commandments must be kept in mind when thinking about Doctrine and regeneration. First, the Letter of the Writings is not the Doctrine and cannot be understood without Doctrine. Second, Doctrine must be drawn or rationally extracted form the Letter of the Writings. Third, the spiritual Doctrine is of Divine origin and can be seen only by those who are enlightened by the Lord. Clearly, our regeneration and salvation goes through orderly stages, and one is the imbibing of the Letter of the Writings and figuring out their meaning in a rational way. This is our First Education in spiritual development or regeneration.

The second phase is to “draw from the sense of the letter of the Writings.” This drawing out process is a rational process of reasoning with our conscious natural mind. It is orderly and objective since others in the Church must be able to also understand the extraction process. Genuine faith cannot be by persuasion or authority (xx). So every regenerating individual must extract Doctrine from the Letter. But this cannot be done prior to studying and figuring out the meaning of the Letter in a rational way. By performing this intellectual discipline we are insured that there will be rational vessels in our natural mind that can serve for enlightenment by the Lord.

You can see that the Lord desires to enlightens everyone, and would instantly do so, if this were according to Order. But it is not possible to do this according to Order, for rational and spiritual reasons that are explained in the Writings. Therefore the Lord commands us to follow the precise condition by which He can enlighten us, and this is the taking up of the Letter of the Writings into our rational mind. As we apply this natural understanding to our daily willing and thinking, the understanding become spiritual. This is done by the Lord who animates the external rational understanding from within, as explained in several places in this book. So the Second Education we must undergo is this drawing out of Doctrine from the Letter. Here not the external physical book is meant, neither the memorized sentences. What is meant is the Letter in our understanding. In other words, the intellectual effort we made in trying to understand the Letter we read in the book. This understanding of the Letter is the Letter within our understanding, and it is the Letter that is called a “vessel” within which the Lord can infuse spiritual truths.

The third step is to confirm the spiritual Doctrine extracted by means of the Letter in the book. Without this the entire process is not genuine but falsified. All three steps are necessary. The Third Education is the development of our skill in confirming spiritual Doctrine in the Letter of the Writings. This activity multiplies the consequences of the spiritual Doctrine and the spread throughout our conscious rational mind, from which we have wisdom to defeat our evil affections.

The Third Education allows us to prove the correctness and purity of the spiritual Doctrine and to disprove the false natural doctrinal theories that many in the Church might put forth at one time or another. The essential human is rational and since Doctrine is a rational entity, it is Doctrine that makes us more and more human. We are not fully human, genuinely human, until we have confirmed the spiritual Doctrine which we received by enlightenment. Because the fully human is the celestial mind, and this is what the celestial mind does, and this is whereby the celestial mind is created by the Lord.

You can see from all this that two things make the all and all of the New Church: the Letter of the Writings and the spiritual Doctrine we extract from it by enlightenment from the Lord.

The process of spiritual development, or regeneration, is gradual and by means (xx). It describes the process in numerous places in the Letter, as a computer search on “regeneration” will instantly demonstrate. The first general step is to study the Letter of the Writings as the Word itself and to gather into our rational mind the Literal form of the Spiritual Doctrine. The form of the Spiritual Doctrine lies within every sentence of the Writings. Even every single word of the Writings must be so honored, being aware of the rational idea that the Divine spiritual Doctrine is laid down in this or that translation. But faithful translations will insure the transmission of the Literal in a genuine rational form that allows it to respond by correspondence to the details of the spiritual Doctrine. There is no doubt that the Lord preserves the Letter of the Writings as He preserves the Letter of the Old and New Testaments.

The spiritual Doctrine is the understanding we have of the Letter in our mind when enlightened. This is a new spiritual understanding not available to us before the enlightenment. It can be read and learned in descriptions given by others, but only a natural understanding can be had in this by this external mechanism. Only a direct internal mechanism allows us to access the spiritual understanding of Doctrine, namely, what the Lord calls enlightenment or illustration (xx). Once enlightened, try to write down the spiritual understanding, and you end up with correspondences for it in the natural-rational system of thinking. You can read the sentence “

Note well: the Letter of the Writings must be in our mind for this to happen. Further, this happens only to the extent that our motive for taking up the Literal in our mind, is a spiritual motive in relation to regeneration. In other words, we read in the Writings that we must take up spiritual Doctrine from the Letter in order to cooperate in our regeneration. This is the right motive, and other motives will not allow the Lord to enlighten us from the Letter we have in our mind. I have discussed this issue throughout Volume 2 and in many places in Volume 1.

Enlightenment in the Letter from the Lord means that He creates a new interior-natural mind within the external-rational mind that is in the upper portion of the natural mind, above the sensuous. This new creation admits nothing whatsoever from self and the world. This is most important to keep in mind in order to be able to see the Divine origin of the Doctrine we bring forth as-of self in the Church. The events in the interior-natural mind are nothing else but correspondences. These correspondences are nothing else but representations in our conscious rational mind of the events going on in the spiritual mind. These events are totally unconscious and of which cannot become aware in this life. So the activity in the spiritual mind is purely a Divine Work. These activities involve the implantations of spiritual seeds and their nurturing and development by the angels from the Lord.

As this Divine procedure is achieved, the exact and full correspondence is recorded in the interior-natural mind. You can see that these correspondences are also Divine since only the Lord deposits spiritual truths and their correspondences. Now e have a new thing entirely. We have an interior-natural mind which gives us conscious awareness of spiritual truths seen through spiritual correspondences that are Divine. In effect, we become conscious of Divine Truth in a spiritual way. Prior to this we only understood spiritual truths in a natural way through our external rational mind. In other words, our First Education, was to implant the Letter into our rational by as-of self voluntary intellectual effort. The Second Education is to become consciously aware of the spiritual correspondences of Divine origin in our interior-natural mind. This new spiritual consciousness is purely of Divine origin, and there is nothing in it from self and the Letter.

Again remember that the conscious awareness of the spiritual Doctrine in the interior-natural mind is there in exact proportion to the motive we have for putting the Letter into our rational mind.

It follows from all this that the Doctrine of the Church placed in the interior-natural by the Lord through correspondences, is a Divine Doctrine that has nothing from self or the world in it. This Divine Doctrine is not man-made but man-received. All those who will honor it can receive it, see it, and consciously understand it to the extent they are undergoing regeneration.

10. Objections To The Divine Doctrine In Our Mind

Prior to our ability to enjoy enlightenment from the Lord, we are immersed in the Letter. Our understanding of the revelations of the Second Coming is an individual struggle. We grasp to understand more and more and we go through various stages of confusion, and even doubt. One sign is that we can readily believe on sentence of the Letter, but not so readily some other sentences. When the literal meaning runs contrary to our beliefs systems and education, we experience some doubt as to the Divine origin of those sentences. Similarly, when we read that there is a Doctrine of the Church, and then read its description in the Letter, we merely believe that these explanations are the Doctrine discussed.

As we undergo reformation in adult life, early or late, we begin to see that the Lord works in every detail of our regeneration, in our thinking especially. He decides what we read when and tries to bend our thinking so that we may receive the spiritual meaning that this within the Letter. We begin to trust that the Lord is supervising these details. A wrong motive for doing this will only yield self-made doctrine, which is neither Divine nor true or valid. But a right motive for doing it will only yield Divine Doctrine. This duality must be fully accepted by being fully convinced o fits truth. The wrong motive cannot yield the Divine Doctrine and the right motive must. It is an inevitable process the Lord has created for the regeneration of the old mind and the formation of the New Church mind. The New Church mind cannot be formed by anything from self-intelligence but only by intelligence form the Lord. Whatever comes into our intelligence form the Lord is Divine.

An example of the Spiritual Doctrine given by the Lord to this generation is the Academy Movement of the General Church. This has tow main portions. First, the acknowledgement that tithe Writings are the Word. And second, the acknowledgement that “the plain teachings of the Writings as the sole authority in the Church." The expression plain teachings refers to the Letter of the Writings. The phrase “sole authority in the Church” refers to the Spiritual Doctrine given by the Lord to the men of the General Church. This divine Doctrine was born in a specific New Church at a particular time in history. This Divine Seed was nurtured by the men of the General Church and confirmed in many ways from the Letter. This Divine Doctrine revealed to the General Church is to serve the entire human race. The Lord has an endless list of spiritual-celestial truths to grant to all the New Church organizations of the endless future. Each time, the Divine Birth in the Church is a replication or recapitulation by correspondence, of the how the Lord Glorified His Human. The Spiritual Doctrine is solely a Divine Work with the men of the Church who are undergoing regeneration and are enlightened by the Lord to see the Divine Doctrine in their interior-natural mind.

To say that the sole authority of the Church is the plain teachings of the Writings is to say that the Spiritual Doctrine cannot form the Church since it is in the interior-natural mind. The Church must be formed by that which is external, hence the Letter of the Writings and ecclesiastical administrations (xx). Clearly no other possibility exists since the Church specific is a natural organization in society with a legal status and responsibilities. It must have a literal constitution and a literal Sacred Scripture. So the Letter of the Writings must be the only and final authority on all things concerning the Church administration and instruction.

It’s very important to understand why the Writings do not specify in greater detail what the Church administration and rituals should be. The Old Testament gave the Jewish Church very precise and detailed procedural steps, rules, and principles to follow under penalty of death and misery. But the New Testament abrogated those details and the new Christian dispensation was almost devoid of Church and worship specifications, leaving only these: Baptism, Holy Supper, the Lord’s Day, the Lord’s Prayer, the entire Word, Weddings, Charity. Clearly this was done to allow cultural differences in religious worship of the Lord. The same is the case with the New Church. So many details could have been given in dozens of volumes of writing, so many details were given about so many subjects, yet almost no details were given about Church administration and worship. Why?

For the same reason as before, to allow the endless proliferation of organizations in the New Church. Only the internal worship has become crucial (xx), and this is a matter of the Spiritual Doctrine. Almost all of the external Church procedures of worship and government are therefore not part of the Letter, nor part of Doctrine. Ecclesiastical government, procedures, and rules are socio-cultural natural issues, and these often become political issues when charity in the Church is made less important than Church organization. The Spiritual Doctrine does not enter into the Church organizational framework and due process of grievance. Nor does the Letter. To attempt to bring forth the Letter in support of a political dissent in the Church can only lead to more dissent until all charity dies, and that Church specific becomes vastated.

Dissent in the Church organization will develop but the Letter of the Writings must not be used to support one side of the argument as against another. To do this would lead the Church into fundamentalism and from a celestial Church it becomes a Church of Cain (xx).

We may fear the social and political implications of saying that the Doctrine in our mind can be Divine. We immediately start imagining that a New Church pope will come along, or several of them, and will mislead the people to their own power hungry or crazed motives and insanities. Since they are in a position of authority an prominence in the Chr5uch, we fear for the destruction of the Church by heresies, just as we are told happened with the Christian Church (xx). As a result of this notion and fear, we might act to suppress the idea of a Divine Doctrine other than the Letter of the Writings.

But the Lord guides our thinking in this all important area, as He does all areas of lesser importance to our salvation. We cannot really become convinced of the Divinity of some Doctrine brought forth by someone in the Church unless we are fully confident that the Lord will also bring clear vision to all sincere men so that they may distinguish between bogus doctrine and spiritual Doctrine of purely celestial origin. If we fail to allow this certainty and confidence in the process, we are not yet acting from the Lord but from ourselves.

When proposals are brought forth about new spiritual insights form the Lord, those who read them may not see that what has been brought forward are genuine spiritual truths of Doctrine, even thought hey may be. This is why all proposals of Spiritual Doctrine must be confirmed by the Letter in many ways, not just here and there. All members of the Church must obey the Lord’s commandment to bring forth the Spiritual Doctrine through the Letter of the Writings. So when someone in the Church brings forth such a proposal, and confirms it by the Letter, the others in the Church must try do likewise. They must search the Letter to see if they can build their own case for the new proposals. Only the case you can build yourself can be of value to your understanding and regeneration. It’s useless for your own regeneration to merely accept a new Doctrinal proposal merely by someone’s authority or intellectual ability to instruct and write.

All proposals of Doctrine must therefore be left to everyone’s conscience and effort. But all proposals of ecclesiastical governance must be left to the organization’s normal due process procedures. Whatever is not specifically in the Letter of the Writings in terms of governance and worship procedure must be handled by the organization’s democratic due process procedures and written constitution. In this way there will be no disturbance in the Church and the priesthood can lead the flock to the good of life by means of instruction. I believe that the written constitution or charter of every Church organization should contain an explicit policy that the Literal must not be used to support or impose any rule or procedure, with the only exception being what is explicitly stated about the Word, Baptism, Weddings, Holy Supper, and the Lord’s Day.

11. The Spiritual Doctrine In The Mind Must Be Proven By The Letter

The Letter of the Writings protects the Church from false proposals of Doctrine since all Doctrine must be confirmed by the Letter (xx). It is impossible to prove rationally that a false Doctrine is from the Letter. Note well: Many such attempts have been made in the Old Christian Church and in the New Church, and this will no doubt continue for a long time, if not permanently. The unregenerate mind born in the New Church will concoct false Doctrine, but it will never be able to prove it from the Letter. If the attempt is made, no proof is produced, but only a correlated argument.

It’s very important to understand the difference between proof and correlated arguments.

An analogy from science may make this easier to understand rationally. Our culture makes us familiar with medical research reported in the news and magazines. correlations are established between some behavior habit and the occurrence of a particular disease. For example, smoker have a higher rate of lung cancer than non-smokers, even when other lifestyle factors are held common such as diet and exercise. For many years this finding served to fuel the campaign against smoking, and indeed it dropped as behavioral habit. The associated illnesses also dropped in frequency. This is an example of relying on correlation argument. When this is done, sometimes the argument turns out to be wrong. Some other unknown correlated factor was present, and it is that actually produces the illness. If this factor is not present, the behavior habits do not lead to the sickness. In the case of smoking, causative proof was also obtained to some extent by means of causative procedures that involve control groups and medically created groups that receive certain treatment.

It is similar with the attempt to distinguish between man-made false doctrine and Divine Doctrine from heaven. Note that we have no choice to make this distinction since we cannot fall back on the earlier idea that the Divine Doctrine is the Letter of the Writings. Now we know that it is within the Letter, hence cannot be written down except by descriptions that are correspondences. This is why it was necessary for the Writings to say that all derived Doctrine must be confirmed by the Letter in an endless process of verification, confirmation, and instruction, by every generation of the Church. This is the endless process of growth of the Church to the entire future to come. The Lord has an endless number of Divine truths He desires to give to the Church from now to eternity. These Divine truths are placed in the spiritual mind, where they induce correspondences in the interior –natural mind, where we become conscious of the spiritual Doctrine, and we know from the Letter, that it is from Divine origin.

This system of Doctrinal evolution in the human race works only to the extent that the individuals of the Church are undergoing lawful regeneration in accordance with the Letter of the Writings.

Since each individual is undergoing regeneration at different rates and with different character, the process of confirming and establishing the Divine Doctrine in the Church is not smooth and agreeable. People will disagree and the gnashing of teeth will be heard in the halls of the Church (xx). Nevertheless, the process will work, since bringing froth genuine Doctrine is a Divine Work the Lord accomplishes through the human race, and this, on an evolutionary scale of permanent increase.

You can see that the Lord gives the Letter and the spiritual Doctrine and that both are tied to each other, one cannot live without the other. The spiritual Doctrine cannot be given in the Letter, but only a natural description of it by means of correspondences. Therefore what we read in the Letter about Doctrine is not the spiritual Doctrine but the Letter of the spiritual Doctrine. The Lord alone can provide us with the spiritual Doctrine within our interior-natural mind.

Add to these most manifest evidences, that the spiritual sense of the Word has been disclosed by the Lord through me, which has never before been revealed since the Word was written among the sons of Israel; and this sense is the very sanctuary of the Word: the Lord Himself is in this sense with His Divine, and in the natural sense with His Human. Not a single iota in this sense can be opened except by the Lord alone. This surpasses all the revelations that have hitherto been made from the creation of the world. By means of this revelation a communication has been opened between men and the angels of heaven, and conjunction of the two worlds has been effected; since when man is in the natural sense, the angels are in the spiritual sense. See what has been written concerning this sense in the chapter on the Sacred Scripture [in THE TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION]. (INV 44)

We read in this passage that Swedenborg was enlightened by the Lord who disclosed through him the “spiritual sense of the Word.” In our First Education phase, we think that “the Word” refers to the Old and New Testament. We think this because this is the plain appearance when Swedenborg quotes from these Two Testaments verse by verse, and phrase by phrase, and explicates their spiritual sense by means of correspondences. In this passage, for instance, it says that the spiritual sense of the Word “has never before been revealed since the Word was written among the sons of Israel.” Hence our natural understanding compels us to think that the Word of the Old Testament is being referred to here.

But in our Second Education phase, we are willing to accept the idea that “the Word” here refers to the Writings. In other words, the passage says that “the spiritual sense of the Writings has been disclosed by the Lord through me.” We can accept the idea that since the Writings have an inner sense, there must be something internal signified by the expression “the sons of Israel.” The passage here is fully accurate and true in its literal meaning by which “the sons of Israel” refer to the Jewish Church and the Old Testament. But it also fully accurate and true in its spiritual sense. “The sons of Israel” has a spiritual sense in the Word of all Three Testaments. The spiritual sense of it in the Old Testament means the Church or those of the Church (AC 6636). Applying this correspondence given by the Letter to the passage above, we can see that it is discussing the men of the New Church, not merely the men of the Jewish Church. The passage therefore is:

The spiritual sense of the Writings has been disclosed by the Lord through me, which has never before been revealed since the Writings was written among the New Church; and this sense is the very sanctuary of the Writings: the Lord Himself is in this sense with His Divine, and in the natural sense with His Human (INV 44) (“the Writings” substituted for “the Word”)

“By me” in the natural sense refers to Swedenborg, but in the spiritual sense it refers to every New Church mind undergoing regeneration by means of the Doctrine from the Letter of the Writings. So the passage actually says that the spiritual sense of the Writings is disclosed by the Lord through every New Church mind for whom it was intended to effect regeneration. This spiritual sense we obtain by enlightenment (or revelation), but not in our First Education, about which it says that it “has never before been revealed.” But in our Second Education, it is for the first time “disclosed by the Lord.” In this spiritual sense is the Divine of the Lord, while in the natural sense is the Human of the Lord. The spiritual sense of the Writings that is disclosed to us is the Spiritual Doctrine, is the spiritual within the natural, and this is the Lord in His Divine Human.

12. Man Enters Heaven Through The Church

Consider the sentence in the sub-title above, quoting TCR 773. Its literal meaning is clear to the natural-rational understanding. It discusses how the New Church mind is to be formed so that it may live in heaven. In a more general sense, it discusses the formation of the spiritual mind since that is what’s called heaven within us (xx). Still in this natural sense, we can see that the sentence asserts the principle of life that we are to support and encourage the Church organization because it is through the instruction and worship in the Church that we know the way to heaven.

In the spiritual sense, which we can consider by applying correspondences to the literal, “man” signifies “one who is intelligent and wise” (AC 158), or “the affection of truth” (AE 280); and also, “faith and truth” (AC 427; 4823). “Heaven” “signifies the internal man,” which designates our spiritual mind. Therefore, the phrase “man enters heaven,” in its spiritual sense discusses the physiology whereby our spiritual mind is opened and activated. Since “man” signifies the “affection for truth” the sentence asserts that it is the affection for truth that opens the spiritual mind. This opening process is accomplished “through the Church.” The “Church,” when applied to our mind, signifies conjunction with the Lord.

The Lord is indeed present with a man through the reading of the Word, but he is conjoined with him through the understanding of truth from the Word, and according thereto; and in proportion as the Lord has been conjoined with a man, in the same proportion the church is in him. The church is within man; the church that is outside of him is the church with a number of men who have the church within them. This is meant by the Lord's words to the Pharisees who asked when the kingdom of God would come:

The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21).

Here the "kingdom of God" means the Lord, and from him, the church.

(SS 78) (see also AC 9305)

From this related passage we can see from the literal meaning that the church within us is the forming of the New Church mind, and “in proportion the church” is in this mind, to that extent “the Lord has been conjoined” with us. To go back then to the original sentence whose spiritual sense we are discussing:

“Man Enters Heaven Through The Church,” we can now elaborate its spiritual topic by rationally expanding on it. To form the spiritual mind we need to start with an affection for truth and becoming wise, which means a love of the Writings and its daily study. To the extent that we then apply these truths to our daily willing and thinking, to that extent the spiritual mind is opened, and to that extent we are conjoined to the Lord. This elaboration is elevated into a Spiritual Doctrine by confirming all its elements in the Letter. The correspondences have been confirmed above, but the thesis as a whole also must be confirmed by the Letter. Searching the Writings, we find this:

[2] With the regeneration of the spiritual man the case is this. He is first instructed in the truths of faith, and then he is held by the Lord in the affection of truth. The good of faith, which is charity toward the neighbor, is at the same time insinuated into him, but in such a way that he is scarcely aware of it; for it lies hidden in the affection of truth, and this to the end that the truth which is of faith may be conjoined with the good which is of charity.

As time goes on, the affection of truth which is of faith increases, and truth is regarded for the sake of its end, that is, for the sake of good, or what is the same, for the sake of the life, and this more and more. Thus is truth insinuated into good, and when this takes place the man imbues himself with the good of life according to the truth that has been insinuated; and so he acts or seems to himself to act from good. Previous to this time, the truth of faith was principal, but afterwards the good of life becomes so.

[3] When this is the case the man is regenerate; but he is regenerate according to the quality and the amount of the truth that has been insinuated in good; and when truth and good act as one, he is regenerate according to the quality and the amount of the good: such is the case with all regeneration. Regeneration is effected to the end that man may be received into heaven. Heaven is nothing else than the marriage of truth and good, and of good and truth (see n. 2508, 2618, 2728, 2729); and if the marriage of truth and good be not formed with a man, he cannot be in the heavenly marriage, that is, in heaven. (AC 2979)

You can see that this passage discusses in the Letter something about the “regeneration of the spiritual man.” This refers to the opening of the spiritual mind since we are not regenerated unless the spiritual mind is opened by the Lord (xx). It describes several stages of this process.

(1) First, we are “instructed in the truths of faith” by means of the Letter of the Writings.

(2) Second, we are “held by the Lord in the affection of truth.”

(3) Third, we apply the truth we obtain to our willing and thinking all day long. This is called “charity toward the neighbor.”

(4) Fourth, to the extent that we do the third step. the Lord conjoins the truth with good in our spiritual mind, an unconscious process of which we are “scarcely aware of it; for it lies hidden in the affection of truth.” The affection of truth from the Letter of the Writings applied to our life, is the mind within which the Lord implants the good of charity. This good of charity is implanted in two places, one totally unconscious, in the spiritual mind, the other consciously, in the interior-natural-mind.

This new conscious awareness of spiritual good and truth is a correspondence of the actual activity of the Lord in the spiritual mind. This relationship by correspondence between the spiritual mind and the interior-natural mind, is described in the passage as “scarcely aware” and “lies hidden.” The hidden part is the interior-rational truths implanted in the spiritual mind. The partial awareness of these truths refers to our awareness of the correspondences in the interior-natural mind. Perceiving interior truths by correspondences in a lower degree is to have partial awareness of those interior truths.

(5) Fifth, “As time goes on, the affection of truth ... increases, and truth is regarded for the sake of ... life, and this more and more.” To the extent that we apply the truths of the Letter to our daily willing and thinking, to that extent we are being regenerated and conjoined to the Lord by means of the opening of the spiritual mind. By continuing this steady process, “the man imbues himself with the good of life ... and so he acts or seems to himself to act from good. Previous to this time, the truth of faith was principal, but afterwards the good of life becomes so.“ This is the mark of the celestial mind that lives in heaven, namely, that it loves truth from a motive to have it govern their willing and thinking. The celestial mind is called here “the man who is regenerate.” This is the mind that is “received into heaven.”

The mind so prepared acts from the “marriage of good and truth” in it. This marriage is called the church in man: ”truth conjoined to good, is the ultimate of the church in man” (AE 449).

In summary, you can see that the three steps we took were as follows: First, we applied correspondences to the original sentence “Man enters heaven through the Church” (TCR 773). Second, we expanded the spiritual sense into a Spiritual Doctrine. Third, we confirmed the Spiritual Doctrine by means of the Letter.

13. Demystifying The Divinity Of The Spiritual Doctrine

The New Church mind has to struggle mightily to receive the idea that the Letter of the Writings is nothing but correspondences and that the real message of the Second Coming lies in the spiritual sense within. This idea is at first threatening, and even mightily threatening. It is the same giant anxiety that the angels experienced when the Lord on earth was to be crucified. The Writings tell us that this angelic doubt about His Mission resulted in one of the greatest temptations the Lord had to endure (xx). The Rational Divine was within the Lord’s non-glorified human which He assumed upon Incarnation. This Rational was the total cumulative intelligence of the entire human race, and it was with the angels. Their heaven was this Rational Divine with them from the Lord. This Rational Divine was the internal man of the Lord on earth prior to glorification. After Glorification and Ascension, a new Rational was with the human race and the angels in heaven. This new Rational was not revealed until the Second Coming. And so we now know that it is the Rational of the Divine Human. A whole new history now starts with the evolution of the human race.

This new capability of the natural mind on earth is the ability to perceive spiritual truths, also called, spiritual-rational truths. The Lord re-created all the Heavens at His Second Coming, just as He re-created the Heavens at His First Coming (xx). The New Heavens of the Second Coming are created out of the new spiritual-rational truths revealed by the Divine Human concerning Himself and the universe. These spiritual and celestial revelations are contained within the Letter of the Writings. This is why the Letter of the Writings is called the Body of the Divine Natural of the Divine Human. You can see that the Divine Human has a Divine Proprium or Self, and has a history of Divine Birth on this earth. Inside this Divine Human is the Lord from Eternity, Unchanging, Unfathomable. The names “Jehovah” and “Divine Father” represent the Lord in His Esse. Human beings cannot relate in any way to the Lord in His Esse. The only relation we can have with this Divine Esse is a mere universal and simplistic idea, namely, that the Lord in His inmost is this Esse, and that this infinite substance is called Divine Love. Our relation to the Divine is therefore possible only with the Lord in His Divine Human.

The Letter of the Writings is the Divine Human in His Divine Natural. Clearly, we want to know the Lord in His Divine Rational, not just in His Divine Natural. By studying and understanding the Writings we are acquiring a view of the Lord that is His Divine Rational laid down in His Divine Natural. Note this expression: “His Divine Rational laid down in His Divine Natural.”

The Lord’s Second Coming was to reveal Himself in His Divine Rational. Ask yourself this: How can the Lord deliver to us a revelation about His Divine Rational?

You no doubt thought: “Through a man whose mind was prepared for receiving it, and then writing it down.” This is correct. But we also need to understand the particulars of this Divine Work if we are going to overcome the great anxiety of losing the Body of the Lord by death. For the Writings say that the Letter must as it were die or vanish, in order for the spiritual sense within to be perceived (xx), as one perceives a bright flashing jewel through a window that was suddenly made clear and spotless. This sudden illumination is called “enlightenment” in the Writings (xx). From this you can see that there is a structural relationship between the natural language sentences of the Word and the spiritual truths contained within. The Letter or Divine Body of the Lord contains His Divine Rational, that new Rational that the Lord has bestowed upon the human race in His Second Coming.

The Lord has provided an infallible Two-Step Method by which He can regenerate every individual for entry into the New Heavens where He reigns as the Divine Human, visible to the angels, and to Swedenborg (xx). This Two-Step Method is to first approach Him as He is in His Divine Natural called the Letter of the Writings, and second, to prepare our mind by reformation to be enlightened by Him when we approach Him in the Divine Letter. This enlightenment is the second step and in this step we receive the spiritual sense. This spiritual sense is the Spiritual Doctrine, which is His Divine Rational with the human race. When one completes this Two-Step Method, the Lord has successfully recreated the Second Coming in an individual. In this way, He recreates His Second Coming into the endless future of the race, insuring that anyone henceforth who wants to live in the New Heavens, can.

14. The Divine Rational Cannot Be Approached In The Letter

To ease our anxiety about the “vanishing” of the Letter we need to think that it is not possible to approach the Divine Rational of the Lord by means of natural-rational ideas. These ideas make up the understanding we have of the Letter of the Writings prior to reformation. Until reformation we have been studying the Divine Natural in the Letter and accumulating natural-rational cognitions, or “vessels” in our natural-rational mind. This is the only mind we control as-of self and are conscious of. Putting the Writings into our rational understanding is an awesome task that requires much study and scholarly effort. We must maintain consistency and be able to see the relations between many parts, and not merely maintaining the original sequential view. The relations between the Numbers constitutes an underlying semantic network in the Writings, a system of cross-references for comparison between them. This cognitive or semantic network can be mapped out by scholarly effort, which brings a superior understanding of the Letter. It requires love for the Lord in His Divine Natural to be able to succeed at this task, done on a daily basis for years!

The more we love the Letter of the Writings, the more we construct and collect suitable rational ideas in our natural-rational mind. This as-of self effort is commanded by the Lord (xx). The Lord commands us to love Him in His Divine Natural. For the New Church mind, this Divine Natural of the Lord is not the New Testament. It is the Writings. This is because the Divine Natural of the Lord in His First Coming was not the Divine Human until after His Ascension. The human race at that time could not perceive Him in His Divine Human. He was invisible to them in the new Form of the Glorified Human Born in Time. In order to see the Lord in His new Divine Human, the human race had to first receive the interior-rational truths of Himself. The angels received this right away, and entered the New Heavens where they now dwell. But the human race on earth must be reborn and reformed before these interior truths can be received.

This rebirth and reformation process is a requirement for everyone regardless of background or birth because the entire human race has fallen spiritually. By heredity everyone now has embedded in the mind spiritual ties to the hells that cannot be repaired by the Lord and must be given up voluntarily by every individual regardless of religion or philosophy. The Lord then recreates new ties to heaven and our mind can now be regenerated. This process goes on until the end.

What allows us to perceive the new interior-truths that the Heavens are now made of?

The answer is the same for us on earth and for the angels in those Heavens: We can perceive the new interior-rational truths when the Lord enlightens us. We can then perceive them in our mind as we are peering through the Letter of the Writings. This peering applies to their reading, but also to our reflection of them in our conscious memory.

The angels have a celestial script in which they read the Writings (xx). The Spiritual Doctrine is within this script of the Letter. It is not in the script of the Letter, but in their understanding of the sense within it. This spiritual understanding is in their spiritual and celestial mind. The Lord’s Divine Rational is this Spiritual Doctrine in their understanding. This is called their Doctrine and all their wisdom is from that source (xx). The Doctrine they draw out of the Letter of the Writings when they are enlightened by the Lord, is the Lord’s Divine Rational of the New Heavens. This is the sense of the Writings in which they dwell. And the richness and power of this sense creates the marvelous habitations in heaven and all of life there.

You can see that the structural relation between the Letter and the spiritual sense within it, is a necessary two-step method for both men on earth and angels in heaven. The spiritual and celestial ideas or truths cannot be laid down in a “naked” form in the Letter. This is because the Letter is laid down in a sensuous script, and this external sensuous appearance is nothing but a correspondence of the spiritual sense. Whatever explanations and ideas are laid down in a script or in an external language, are automatically nothing but correspondences. Nothing but correspondences can result from the action of the spiritual being laid down in the natural sensuous or in the spiritual sensuous.

The Lord enlightens us in a similar way now and when we are angels—through the Letter of the Word.

Form these considerations it is clear that we have nothing to lose by letting go of the Letter as an opaque glass, and allowing the Lord to clarify it spotlessly, so that we can see the spiritual-rational truths He wants us to have of Him.

Note also that this Two-Step Method is not a once and for all deal. It is endlessly to be repeated hour by hour, every day. This is the cyclical process of regeneration, by which the Lord gives us new truths by which we can guide our willing and thinking. By the light of these new truths we can improve our willing and thinking still more, and thereby receive more new truths. And so on, until the end. Therefore we are not going to let go of the Letter, thinking that is dead and unimportant. This would be spiritual suicide and an act of crucifying the Word. We must increase our love for the Letter of the Writings because it is the containant of the holy spiritual truths the Lord wants to give us. And this increase in love shows itself by what I have called Step 3 elsewhere in the book (See Chapter 8 Section 3).

This step is the confirmation in the Letter of the spiritual sense we receive by enlightenment from the Lord.

This requires dedicated scholarly effort and love for the Letter of the Writings as the Lord’s Divine Natural within which is His Divine Rational. Rather than being dead, the Letter of the Writings becomes even more Holy and beloved, as we begin to fathom the magnitude of the truths being opened to us by the Lord. We begin to love every sentence in the Writings, and revere it. And this reverence is not external as it was prior to our regeneration, but is our internal worship within which is the external reverence for the Letter.

Besides all of the above considerations, there is also this scientific one: That the structural relation between the Letter of the Writings and the Spiritual Doctrine within, is reproduced everywhere in our mind and in the world, though in a different way because one involves the Divine only, and the other involves created human beings. The Writings point out the analogy of the sentences we write and speak in everyday discourse (xx). For example, if a stranger approaches me on the street and says, “Do you have a light?” I need to bypass the literal meaning, and perceive that he wants me to provide him with a flame for his cigarette. But if he says, “Do you have a quarter?” I perceive that he is begging for some money. When I was in graduate school in the late 1950s we used to study these relationships and called that type of research “psycholinguistics” because it was a focus on relating sentences to thinking. A similar phenomenon obtains when reading children’s stories, which can be understood sensuously or rationally. The child listens to them sensuously, with imagination, while the adult reads it with a conscious focus on the moral lessons that the stories exemplify. The moral understanding is a perception of the interior of the letter of the story.

Similarly when we read the Old and New Testament as we continue to advance in our study of the Writings. We can no longer read them except from the perspective of the Writings, seeing the sentences as correspondences, and being able to perceive what spiritual truths they stand for. Now here we need to take a giant step: For years prior to our reformation we had not acquired this distinction: “understanding spiritual truths naturally” vs. “understanding spiritual truths spiritually.” We merely went along with the automatic assumption that because the topic and subject matter of the Letter was about spiritual truths, therefore we were understanding them spiritually, when actually, we were understanding them naturally. Only by enlightenment can we understand them spiritually, and the Lord does not enlighten until after we complete our reformation sometime in adult life.

After reformation we can make the distinction and we can acknowledge that until now we had not made the distinction. Once we make this distinction we lose our fear of letting go of the Letter in order that we may be enlightened with the spiritual sense.

[2] Falsity within factual knowledge is what most of all molests those who belong to the spiritual Church. The reason for this is that they do not have a perception of truth that springs from good, only a knowledge of truth derived from religious teaching. People like these are subject very much to molestation from factual knowledge, for known facts serve as very general vessels, and until truths have been introduced into them to make them translucent, so that one no longer notices them, they may sometimes appear to be contrary to truths. Furthermore factual knowledge is full of the illusions of the senses which cannot be dispelled by those who have only a knowledge of things derived from religious teaching and no perception of truth that springs from good. The main reason for this is that the light of the world holds sway with these people, a light which seems to be clear light as long as the light of heaven does not flow into it but which turns from light into obscurity the moment that the light of heaven penetrates it. This explains why these people are enlightened and clever in worldly matters but dull and obtuse in heavenly ones. (6865)

We belong to the “spiritual Church” when we have acquired knowledges from the Letter of the Writings and suppose that this understanding is a spiritual understanding. We are vulnerable in this state to heresies and persuasions, and because we sense our vulnerability, we vehemently oppose the idea that someone else can extract a spiritual meaning where we only see the natural. Thus we are led to doubt or deny that the Letter of the Writings are written in pure correspondences. When we are in that state, it is said of us: “This explains why these people are enlightened and clever in worldly matters but dull and obtuse in heavenly ones. .” To be “clever in worldly matters” refers to knowledges about the Letter of the Writings separate from their internal. To “be dull and obtuse in heavenly matters” means to doubt or deny that the Writings as the Word are written in correspondences in the same way as the Old Testament and New Testament are written in pure correspondences. Not to be able to apply to itself what the Writings say about the Word, makes us “dull and obtuse in heavenly matters.” The spiritual sense of the Writings is called “heavenly matters.”

15. Examples Of Enlightenment In Everyday Circumstances

One of the stumbling blocks to understanding enlightenment through the Letter of the Writings, is the impression that it is something mystical, hence the opposite of the Nunc Licet Doctrine of explaining away all mystery in spiritual things. Enlightenment when seen from below appears a mystical thing. The New Church mind at first wants to be anchored in solid rock, and this is the rationality of all spirituality. Nothing must be hidden from the rational understanding. Under this spell, we give a purely natural explanation of enlightenment. When we read in the Letter that the Lord enlightens us to see the spiritual meaning of the Letter (xx), we take this in a purely natural way. We suppose that enlightenment when we read the Letter means that we can see the literal meaning more deeply, more in its universal application, and interrelation with others parts of the Letter.

In this mode of reasoning we do not think that the Letter of the Writings is written in pure correspondences. When we come across passages saying that the Letter of the Word is written in pure correspondences (xx), we do not think about the Writings. We think about the Old and New Testament. Somehow in this mentality, we are able to neutralize the force of the Letter by restricting what it says about the Word, so as to exclude it from applying to the Writings. Later, as we think back on this former mentality, we can be amazed that we could neutralize the force of rationality whenever it fits a preconception we do not want to lose.

But at last we are able to be strictly fair and logical in the application of the Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, which is that the Writings in its letter is written in pure correspondences.

Once we accept this, and understand it, a whole new field of vision is opened up to our understanding. Now we can see what enlightenment refers to, namely a new perception that is a discrete degree above the natural-rational understanding. Deepening this natural understanding of the Letter is what we thought enlightenment to be, in the earlier mentality. But we begin to understand the scientific mechanism of enlightenment, and look for it in the Letter. Now we begin to put things together in the Letter in a way we didn’t before. This new putting together follows a logic we didn’t have before enlightenment. But now we have the perception called enlightenment, we can objectively know what it is within us, we can pinpoint the activity in our mind that is this new perception called enlightenment. The Letter clearly confirms this new perception, but we can see how it is not the literal meaning of the Letter that gives this new perception.

If you don’t want to bother making these finer distinctions, enlightenment will continue to appear as something either mystical or natural. But when you are willing to put up the mental effort to understand it scientifically, the mechanism is clear and logical, not mystical and vague.

Such was the man of the Most Ancient Church; who, if he were living and read the Word at the present day, would not cleave at all to the sense of the letter; but would be as if he did not see it, but only the internal sense abstractly from the letter; and indeed as if the letter had no existence. Thus he would be in the life or soul of the Word. It is the same everywhere in the Word, even in its historical parts, which were just such as are narrated, and yet there is not so much as one little word therein that does not, in the internal sense, enfold within it deep secrets which never appear to those who hold the mind in the historical connection. Thus in this chapter by the names, in the literal or historical sense, are meant the peoples that constituted the Ancient Church, but in the internal sense their doctrinals are signified. (AC 1143)

This passage discusses the Most Ancient Church in the Letter, but in its spiritual sense it discusses something about our states of regeneration (xx). If we apply to ourselves the expression “the man of the Most Ancient Church” we are designating the celestial mind we become through regeneration. For only this mind is “living at the present day,” that is, only the celestial mind within us is a living state, all others are not living states but dead. In this living celestial mode of thinking, we “would not cleave at all to the sense of the letter.” The “historical parts” applied to the Word of the Writings refer to all the natural and spiritual scientifics that are revealed in the literal meaning. Natural scientifics are truths about the natural world, and spiritual scientifics are truths about the spiritual world. Both are considered “historical parts” because they are a collection of facts, observations, and experiments about phenomena in both worlds. Even these sensuous scientific facts contain a spiritual sense. This sense “enfolds within it deep secrets which never appear to those who hold the mind in the historical connection.”

Remember that the Letter has two distinct uses. First, to present the literal meaning so that we may apply them as commandments in our daily living. Second, to enfold the spiritual sense so that we can extract from it the Spiritual Doctrine we need for our regeneration. These are the two Divine functions of the Letter of the Writings. Neither must be taken away. To take away one of these is to rob from the Lord—a deathly sin.

16. Surface Meaning And Underlying Meaning Of Sentences

Cloud ... denotes Divine Truth in the ultimates, consequently the Word in the sense of the letter (AE 594)

An analogy may help you see that the structural mechanism between the sense of the letter of the Writings and its spiritual meaning are inseparable. Think about learning to speak a language. You first of all need to be exposed to sample sentences, spoken or written. The sound and the script are the external corporeal part of the language structure. These sounds and letters have no meaning of their own. They are held together in the appropriate pattern not by themselves, but by some directing component within it. This directing component is called syntax in the modern science of linguistics. Syntax is not visible or audible. It is not a sensuous component of language or speech.

Syntax, formerly known as grammar, assembles meaningless elements of sound or script, putting them together in a pattern that fits the language as known by its speakers and users. Syntactic rules of assembling sound and script patterns have been precisely described in terms of mathematical and logical systems. This was the proof that meaningless sound and script elements are held together and put together by rationally identifiable rules and principles. When we hear a sentence or read it, the individual elements of the sounds and letters suddenly have a meaning.

Where is the meaning conveyed? It is not in the external corporeal form of the sounds and letters. Proof thereof is obtained when you talk gibberish as a game. We then put together the meaningless elements of sound not according to the syntactic rules of our language. The result is that the meaningless outward elements remain meaningless. Clearly then, the meaning is not in the letters or sounds, but in something within them, in another dimension altogether, not related to sensuous perception by means of the eye or ear. This inner dimension of the letters and groupings of letters, is the syntax that puts them together and holds them together as appropriate forms and patterns.

The sub-forms that make up words can be interpreted by rules of meaning extraction. For example, when you see the word “didn’t,” you can infer form the rules you know that it can be expanded as “did not” and refers to some action in the past performed by humans or animals, or an activity by an inanimate object. This expansion of the original word constitutes a “doctrine” since it brings together into a rational system a number disparate elements: humans, animals, inanimate objects, past, present, action, activity, reference, names, number, quantity. This “doctrine” was extracted from the word “didn’t” in its literal meaning. Doctrine can be extracted from the literal because the literal is contextualized by science and culture. The literal could not have been produced without this contexts. And what came form the context is embodied in the literal. Therefore it can also be extracted from it. What went into it now can come out of it.

But note that the method of extraction is not continuous but discrete. The corporeal of the letters, or sounds, can be studied endlessly but they will not yield any information about the meaning. There is no continuous improvement of vision regarding the corporeal that will ever yield the sensuous. The two relate to each other by correspondences. In ordinary language, there are no actual correspondences, as there were in the language of the ancients, and in the Writings today. But the corporeal and the sensuous in natural language relate to each other in a way that represents actual correspondences. This is why we say that the meaning of a sentence is in a different “dimension” than the corporeal or physical letters and sound patterns. The meaning is in a dissension of rationality while the letter itself is in a dimension of physicality, these being in actual discrete degrees.

Note a possible source of confusion. When we speak of the Letter regarding the Writings we do not mean the corporeal only but the corporeal joined to the sensuous. This is because we are thinking of the literal meaning of the sentences when we discuss the Letter of the Writings. The physical letters of the Writings in the original Latin in which Swedenborg wrote, represent the Lord’s glorified Physical Body that ascended to Heaven. But the Lord’s Divine Natural includes the Divine Corporeal and the Divine Sensuous. Hence when we say the Letter of the Writings, we mean the literal meaning of the sentences that are made up by physical letters and spaces.

The human mind is a structure of organs arranged in a hierarchical level from highest to lowest. It’s therefore no surprise that the rational analysis of syntax in linguistics and philosophy reveals many sub-components of a sentence arranged in hierarchical levels, with different types of rules at each level. These levels within a sentence each represent a different discrete degree in the human mind. One of the levels of a sentence is called semantics. This is a mental system similar to a searchable dictionary, glossary, and encyclopedia. The content of the semantics is a social doctrine or agreement among the speakers of a language. This means that in order to create or understand an appropriate sentence, we need to acquire a precise knowledge about the conventions used by the speakers. This common knowledge is the source of the meaning of a sentence.

In other words, the things to which a sentence refers to and discusses, are things that have a fixed location in the categories and cells of this common knowledge carried around in the minds of the speakers. Typically all sentences we create in a conversation or essay, are unique or different in some way from similar sentences spoken or heard before. There are a few recurrent sentence patterns or “formulaic expressions” that we use in greetings, apologies, etc., but for the most part each sentence is unique. This reflects the doctrine that no two things in the universe can be the same, since in the Lord infinite things make a one (xx) and infinite variety is represented in every created thing.

How then do we know the meaning of a sentence if it is unique and we’ve never heard it before? The meaning of a sentence is something we extract from the letters and their groupings. The meaning is not available in the letters of the sentence. There are two different ways we extract meaning from the letters that make up a sentence.

The first method is to extract the literal meaning of the sentence. This is done by interpreting the words, matching them to our semantic dictionary, and using the syntactic rules that we learned, to home in on one specific literal meaning. The combination of words that have a known meaning, and the syntactic rules of logic by which they’ve been assembled, allows this extraction of the literal meaning of the sentence. The result of this process is conjunction between writer and reader, or speaker and hearer. One type of conjunction is called communication in which one individual’s affection becomes known to another individual, whereupon the second individual makes know his affection to the first, and the loop repeats itself. In this way individuals who are conjoined become a source of affectional influence to each other.

The second method is used after the first has been applied. Once we understand the literal meaning of the sentence, we can extract another meaning from that. It is called a “deeper” meaning because it is nowhere visible from the literal meaning itself. Take for instance, the sentence “Do you know that it’s dangerous to stick something in that plug?” The literal meaning states that it is dangerous to stick something in that plug, and asks whether the hearer knows it. The deeper meaning states that the hearer should stop sticking something into the plug, or else something bad will happen and the hearer will be in trouble, and regret it.

This underlying expanded statement reflects the true purpose of the speaker in creating that particular sentence for that situation. Now the hearer has to recapture the speaker’s purpose. First the hearer extracts the literal meaning. Second, the hearer extracts the deeper meaning that reveals the purpose of the speaker. The third step consists of a reaction and decision by the hearer about what to do next (e.g., to stop, to continue, to argue, to explain, etc.). The literal meaning carried within the combination of sounds or letters, is called the outside of the sentence, but the deeper meaning extracted from the literal meaning, is called the inside.

Insofar as they are in light, so far they are also in intelligence and wisdom; but insofar as they are not in light, thus insofar as they are in shade, so far they are not in intelligence and wisdom (AC n. 2776, 3190, 3337). It is for this reason that in common speech "light" is predicated of the things of the understanding. Man is not aware of this reason, and therefore believes that these terms are used merely by way of comparison. Men use many other forms of expression that flow from a perception of such things as exist in the other life, in which they are as to their spirits, and that have been received in conversation because they are interiorly acknowledged, but are blotted out of notice by the things of the body, which are of such a nature as to extinguish the things of perception in which man's interior man is. (AC 3693)

From this passage we can see that people speak with correspondences though they are not aware of it. We speak this way because the source of our speech is in the interior mind, which is spiritual. We use “many forms of expression” in our everyday speech “that flow from a perception of such things as exist in the other life.” Our spiritual mind sees spiritual light, which upon entering, enlightens its understanding. In the natural mind, these correspondences are “blotted out of notice.” Nevertheless, they can be noticed by explanations of it laid down in the Letter, and in this passage.

You can see from all this, and many other examples you can make up yourself, that there is always from creation in every object or sentence, a structural relation between an outside something, and its inside. The universal aspects of this relation has been revealed in the Writings (xx). The Writings have an outermost portion as the corporeal script and numbers arranged in fixed paragraphs and sentences. This is called the Corporeal of the Lord, His Physical Body in His new revelation of the Second Coming. This corporeal is dead in itself, and meaningless, with no rationality or truth whatsoever. To worship this Divine Corporeal in itself, is a cult similar to the worship of the Lord’s earthly relics, such as His robe, tunic, place of burial, stones He walked on, things He touched, as well as the simulacrums of them such as paintings and crosses. This corporeal spirituality is infernal (xx).

Clearly then, when we worship the Lord in His Word of the Second Coming, we begin our worship with the literal meaning within the dead letters. We call this outward meaning the “Letter of the Writings,” which is to say, not the physical letters, but their literal meaning in grammatical sentences. The literal meaning is one discrete degree above the corporeal letters, and is called the natural-sensuous mind. There are two ways of extracting the literal meaning from the physical letters. The first is to interpret the words as put together by the syntax. For instance, we read:

For all angels were born people, and a person is, in respect to the interior elements which are those of his mind, a heaven in miniature form” (DLW 231).

The surface meaning of the literal states that all angels were first people on earth and that people’s interior portion of the mind is a heaven in miniature.

Besides this surface meaning, the literal meaning also contains a general application because the meaning of this sentence is related to the meaning of other sentences in the Writings. Extracting this deeper meaning of the literal sentence requires that we know some of those other sentences that this one relates to in meaning. By putting various sentences together, and applying them to this sentence, we are able to extract a deeper layer of the literal meaning. This is not yet a spiritual meaning, but a deeper natural meaning.

In this case we can recall that the “interior elements” of the mind exist and live in the spiritual world and are in connection with angels in heaven (xx). We also recall that angels inflow into our interior mind through interior meanings called spiritual truths (xx). From these related sentences or knowledges, we perceive that the sentence we are considering, discusses where heaven is in relation to our mind and how individuals are connected to each other outwardly to make up a heaven. People’s connection to each other involving their interior mind are in a heaven together. Though they are located physically apart, they are together in the interior portion of the mind.

This deeper meaning is not a spiritual meaning. No matter how deeply we study and know the Letter of the Writings, we cannot attain to a knowledge of its spiritual meaning by going deeper and deeper in our investigations of parallel paragraphs in the books of the Writings. Such scholarship is indeed required as a first step, but it does not lead to a spiritual understanding of these deeper sentences and doctrines.

There is no continuity of development from the Letter to the Spirit by means of the Letter.

They are a discrete degree apart, which means that their connection is achieved solely by pure correspondences. In order to be able to extract the spiritual meaning from the literal, we must use the science of correspondences (xx). Let’s look at the sentence again:

For all angels were born people, and a person is, in respect to the interior elements which are those of his mind, a heaven in miniature form” (DLW 231).

In this case we may know, or search and discover in the Letter of the Writings, that “angels” correspond to intelligence and wisdom from Divine Truth (HH 179).The “interior mind” is also called the internal man, and it corresponds to heaven (AC 911). Heaven itself represents and corresponds to the Lord in His Divine Human. The “form” of heaven represents the Grand Human (AC 684, 1276). From these correspondences we can extract a spiritual meaning for the sentence. This spiritual meaning is within the literal but is not visible in the literal. It must be extracted by the science of correspondences. In this case the spiritual sense discusses the internal of the human race and its connection to the Lord.

To confirm this in the Letter, look at the other sentences to which it is related:

The existence of these three degrees in people can be seen from the elevation of a person's mind even to the degrees of love and wisdom possessed by angels of the second and third heavens. For all angels were born people, and a person is, in respect to the interior elements which are those of his mind, a heaven in miniature form. Consequently there are from creation as many degrees of height in a person as there are heavens. The human being is furthermore an image and likeness of God, and these three degrees are therefore engraved on a person because they exist in the human God, which is to say, in the Lord. (DLW 231)

We can see that the Letter confirms the spiritual sense that was extracted from the sentence. You can see that our “likeness to God” is mentioned and since God is heaven, we have heaven within us in that likeness.

17. The Divinity Of The Spiritual Sense We Extract From The Letter

Now take another example, this time from a Memorable Relations:

I once saw an angel flying beneath the eastern heaven, holding in his hand and at his lips a trumpet, which he sounded towards the north, towards the west, and towards the south. (CL 2)

By finding other sentences in the Writings that relate to this one, we can extract a spiritual sense by applying the correspondences.

The Letter in the original sentence	Correspondences from other parts of the Letter	Citation
Angel	wisdom from the Lord	HH 179
trumpet	celestial goods and celestial things of faith	AR 276; AC 420
eastern heaven	those who are in love to the Lord	AR 875
lips	Doctrine from the Lord	AC 1288
hand	the power which is of truth	AC 8910
north	exteriors in which truth is in obscurity	AC 3708
south	a state of truth in its light	AC 9648
west	a state of good declining	AC 9648
I once saw an angel flying beneath the eastern heaven, holding in his hand and at his lips a trumpet, which he sounded towards the north, towards the west, and towards the south. (CL 2)

Note that when correspondences are applied to the Writings we are applying one part of the Letter to another part of itself. This is extremely important to understand. There is no self-intelligence that can enter into this process, or else its spiritual significance vanishes. This is actually a faithful process of ritual worship wherein the self is effaced, and to the extent that this effacement is genuine, to that extent the application of correspondences is a Divine work. One need not fear creating popes in the New Church! Everyone can verify that the Letter is applied to the Letter in a correct manner without distortion in the same way as anyone can verify the size of a box by measuring it and recording the numbers. And if our brother comes up with a spiritual meaning from correspondences correctly applied, should we not listen to him? We should then examine the observation or proposal as some Divine Seed given to the Church through this individual.

If it is a genuine Divine Seed, the Lord will enlighten every one who examines it from an appropriate emotive and perspective, as explicitly stated in the Letter of the Writings. This is not a matter of merit, of position, or of representation by the individual who is describing the Divine Seed he received by enlightenment. It is solely a scientific matter of checking A with B. Because the Spiritual Doctrine that a man receives from the Lord by enlightenment is a Divine Doctrine given to the Church that it may spread it to the human race. It is not something mystical and hard to understand, or it would be useless. The embodiment of the Divine Seed in literal language is clear and simple to understand since it is given to the natural-rational mind, a level of thinking that all educated persons use in daily life. Extracting the spiritual sense from the literal cannot be a mystical affair that confuses or persuades others. It is like extracting meaning from something someone says to us. It is normally automatic, though at times it arouses puzzlement and problem-solving. Anyone with loving practice, can teach themselves to extract the spiritual meaning of the majority of sentences on any page in the Writings. To return to our example:

Applying these correspondences to the sentence in this Memorable Relation, we can extract a spiritual sense that lets us see that it is actually discussing the various states of our mind in relation to the Lord. It is telling a story about what an Angel did as Swedenborg watched from a distance. This event did occur. But the reason these details are told is on account of their correspondences.

Wisdom from the Lord (“angel flying”) is available to us in our love to the Lord (“I once saw in the eastern heaven”). The Spiritual Doctrine (“celestial things of faith”), is appropriated to us as the power of truth (“holding in his hand”). The greatest wisdom and power is received in our love to the Lord (“eastern heaven”). Less wisdom and intelligence is received in lower forms of the Doctrine in accordance with our love (“towards the south, west, north”). Exterior truths (“north”) are less enlightening than truths seen in light from the Lord (“east” and “south”).

If we now put together the two sentences, they look like this:

original sentence in the Letter:

I once saw an angel flying beneath the eastern heaven, holding in his hand and at his lips a trumpet, which he sounded towards the north, towards the west, and towards the south. (CL 2)

spiritual sense extracted by the application of correspondences:

Wisdom from the Lord is available to us in our love to the Lord. The spiritual is appropriated to us as the power of truth. The greatest wisdom and power is received in our love to the Lord. Less wisdom and intelligence is received in external forms of the spiritual in accordance with our love. Exterior truths are less enlightening than truths seen in light from the Lord.

Note at the outset that the “spiritual sense” is always discussed in a natural-rational way. A spiritual understanding of what is “the spiritual sense” cannot be obtained directly from understanding the extracted sentence. Nevertheless, we must engage in this process for it is a commandment (xx). At some point we begin to understand the physiology of regeneration and then it becomes clear that we must create natural-rational vessels for the Lord to enlighten us so that we can have a spiritual understanding of those vessels. We then proceed with the natural-rational description of extracting the Spiritual Doctrine from the Letter.

Note also at the outset that the extracted sentence is as much the Word as the original, to the extent that appropriate procedures were followed, as explicitly instructed in the Letter of the Writings (xx). If therefore truly appropriate procedures were followed, you can see that the extracted sentence is also Divine since you have not introduced anything from self-intelligence and the world. This is why we say that we are applying the Letter to the Letter, when extracting the spiritual sense that is contained within it. In other words, we are applying the Divine (in the form of passages from the Letter) to the Divine (in the form of the original sentence), and the result is Divine (in the form of the extracted sentence).

But in order to generalize the extracted sentence and relate it to ourselves, we need to expand it into an argument, or a series of connected sentences that amount to a thesis called the Spiritual Doctrine. Compare the original with the extracted. The original is one sentence, the extraction from it is five sentences. In other words a sentence of the Letter was expanded by extraction into a paragraph that constitutes a Spiritual Doctrine laid down in the natural-rational language. This Spiritual Doctrine is also Divine Doctrine in the Church (xx). This is true to the extent that the expansion was done following appropriate rules given in the Letter of the Writings regarding how the Spiritual Doctrine must be extracted by the man of the Church (xx).

Once the Spiritual Doctrine is formulated and written down it becomes as holy as the Letter, for the Spiritual Doctrine in the Church is Divine Truth, and is the Lord with the Church (xx). This is true to the extent that genuine appropriate procedures were applied, as already indicated. Now it is required that we confirm the Spiritual Doctrine with the Letter of the Writings. This confirmation is necessary as part of the process of applying the Letter to the Letter, for the Lord reveals truths to us from Firsts to Lasts and from Lasts to Firsts (xx). The Letter is called “Lasts” while the Spiritual Doctrine is called “Firsts.”

Let us then confirm the Spiritual Doctrine we extracted. This can be done with some research. Automated computer research programs of the Writings such as NewSearch, makes this process efficient. In this case we can confirm the Spiritual Doctrine we extracted by many other passages that relate to it, as for instance: xx, and many others.

original sentence in the Letter:

I once saw an angel flying beneath the eastern heaven, holding in his hand and at his lips a trumpet, which he sounded towards the north, towards the west, and towards the south. (CL 2)

spiritual sense extracted by the application of correspondences:

confirming passages:

All things of the man who is in the good of celestial love, both interior and exterior, ... receive the influx of Divine truth from the Lord and from this are in enlightenment (AC 10331)

[4] With those who are in the good of love to the Lord, wisdom, intelligence, knowledge, and work, follow together in order from inmost to outermost. With such men, wisdom is inmost, for it is to will well from love; intelligence is second, for it is to understand well from willing well. These two are of the internal man. Knowledge consists in knowing well, and work in doing well, both from willing well. These two are of the external man. (AC 10331)

They who are of the church are in a life of good, and have faith in truths (AC 2832)

The interior power of truth, is the power of the interior man acting into the exterior, or of the spirit