into love of them and still not be reformed._ This is because he
possesses rationality and liberty; by rationality he can be raised into
an almost angelic wisdom, and by liberty into love not unlike angelic
love. But such as the love is, such is the wisdom; if the love is
celestial and spiritual, the wisdom becomes so, but if the love is
diabolical and infernal, the wisdom is likewise. Outwardly, and so to
others, it may seem to be celestial and spiritual, but in inward form,
namely in its essence, it is diabolical and infernal; not as manifested,
but as it is within one. That it is of this nature men do not see, for
they are natural, see and hear naturally, and the outward form is
natural; but angels do see it, for they are spiritual, see and hear
spiritually, and the inward form is spiritual.
[2] From this it is plain that man can be admitted into wisdom about
spiritual things and also into love of them and still not be reformed; he
is admitted only into a natural love of them, not into a spiritual. This
is for the reason that man can admit himself into a natural love, but the
Lord alone can admit him into a spiritual love, and those admitted into
this are reformed, but those admitted only into the natural love are not.
For the most part the latter are hypocrites, and many are of the Order of
Jesuits who inwardly do not believe in the divine at all, but play
outwardly with divine things like actors.
223. It has been granted me by much experience in the spiritual world to
know that man possesses in himself the faculty of apprehending arcana of
wisdom like the angels themselves. For I have seen fiery devils who not
only understood arcana of wisdom when they heard them, but who spoke
them, too, out of their rationality. But the moment they returned to
their diabolical love they did not understand them, but in place of them
the contrary, which was insanity, and this they called wisdom. In fact, I
was allowed to hear them laugh at their insanity when they were in a
state of wisdom, and at wisdom when they were in an insane state. One who
has been of this character in the world, on becoming a spirit after death
is usually brought into states of wisdom and insanity by turns, for him
to distinguish the one from the other. But although such men see from the
wisdom that they are insane, when the choice is given them, as it is to
each, they betake themselves into the state of insanity, love it and feel
hatred for the state of wisdom. The reason is that their inward nature
has been diabolical and their outward seemingly divine. They are meant by
devils who affect to be angels of light, and by the man in the house of
the nuptials who was not dressed in a wedding garment and was cast into
outer darkness (Mt 22:11-13).
224. Who cannot see that it is the internal from which the external
exists and that consequently the external has its essence from the
internal? And who does not know by experience that the external can
appear out of accord with the essence it has from the internal? It does
so obviously with hypocrites, flatterers and dissemblers. That a person
can outwardly feign to be other than himself is manifest from actors and
mimics. They know how to represent kings, emperors and even angels in
tone of voice, speech, face and gesture as though they were really such,
when they are nevertheless only actors. We allude to this because man can
similarly act the deceiver in spiritual things as well as civil and
moral, and that many do is well known.
[2] When the internal in its essence is infernal, and the external in its
form appears to be spiritual and yet has its essence, as we said, from
the internal, the question arises where in the external that essence is
hidden. It does not show in gesture, voice, speech or face, yet is
interiorly hidden in all four. That it is, is plain from the same in the
spiritual world. For when man passes from the natural world to the
spiritual, as he does at death, he leaves his externals behind along with
his body and retains his internals, which he has stored up in his spirit.
If his internal was infernal, he then appears as a devil, such as he was
as to his spirit during life in the world. Who does not acknowledge that
everyone leaves external things behind with the body and enters into
internal things on becoming a spirit?
[3] To this I will add that in the spiritual world there is a
communication of affections and of thoughts from them, which results in
no one's being able to speak except as he thinks; likewise, everyone
changes facial expression and reflects his affection, and thus shows in
his face what he is. Hypocrites are allowed sometimes to speak otherwise
than they think, but the tone of the voice sounds utterly out of harmony
with their interior thoughts, and they are recognized by the discord. It
may be evident from this that the internal lies hidden in the tone of
voice, the speech, the face and gesture of the external, and that it is
not perceived by men in the world, but plainly by angels in the spiritual
world.
225. It is plain from this that while he lives in the natural world man
may be admitted into wisdom about spiritual things and into love of them
also, and that this happens or can happen with the merely natural as well
as with those who are spiritual, with this difference, however, that the
latter are reformed by these means and the former are not. It may seem,
also, that the former love wisdom, but they do so only as an adulterer
loves a noble woman, that is, as mistress, speaking caressingly to her
and giving her beautiful garments, but saying of her privately to
himself, "She is only a vile harlot whom I will make believe that I love
because she gratifies my lust; if she should not, I would cast her away."
The internal man of the unreformed lover of wisdom is this adulterer; his
external man is the woman.
226. (ii) _If man recedes from these later and turns to what is contrary,
he profanes holy things._ There are many kinds of profanation of what is
holy, of which in the following section, but this is the gravest of all.
Those who profane in this way become no longer human beings after death;
they live indeed, but are continually in wild fantasies. They seem to
themselves to soar aloft and while they remain there they sport with
fantasies which they see as realities. No longer human, they are referred
to not as "he" or "she" but "it." In fact, when they come to view in
heaven's light they look like skeletons, some like skeletons of the color
of bone, others like fiery skeletons, and still others like charred ones.
The world does not know that profaners of this kind become like this
after death, and the reason is that the cause is unknown. The real cause
is that when man first acknowledges and believes divine things and then
lapses and denies them, he mixes the holy with the profane. Once they are
mixed, they cannot be separated without destroying the whole. That these
things may be perceived more clearly, they are to be disclosed in due
order as follows: 1. Whatever a man thinks, speaks and does from the
will, whether good or evil, is appropriated to him and remains. 2. The
Lord in His divine providence constantly foresees and disposes that evil
shall be by itself and good by itself, and thus may be separated. 3. This
cannot be done, however, if man first acknowledges and lives according to
truths of faith and afterwards recedes and denies them. 4. Then he mixes
good and evil to the point that they cannot be separated. 5. Since good
and evil in anyone must be separated, and in such a person cannot be, he
is destroyed in all that is truly human.
227. These are the causes that lead to such enormity, but as they are
obscure as a result of ignorance of them, they are to be explained so
that they will be plain to the understanding. 1. _Whatever man thinks,
speaks and does from the will, whether good or evil, is appropriated to
him and remains._ This was explained above (nn. 78-81); for man has an
external or natural memory and an internal or spiritual memory. On the
latter memory are written each and all things that he thought, spoke or
did from his will in the world, so fully that nothing is lacking. This
memory is his book of life, which is opened after death and according to
which he is judged. Much more about this memory is reported from
experience in the work _Heaven and Hell_ (nn. 461-465).
[2] 2. _The Lord in His divine providence constantly foresees and
disposes that evil shall be by itself and good by itself, and thus may be
separated._ Everyone is both in evil and in good, for he is in evil from
himself and in good from the Lord; he cannot live without being in both.
If he were in himself alone and thus in evil alone, he would not possess
anything living; nor would he if he were in the Lord alone and thus in
good alone. In the latter case he would be like one suffocated and
gasping for breath or like one dying in agony; in the former case he
would be devoid of life, for evil apart from good is dead. Therefore
everyone is in both, with the difference that in the one instance he is
inwardly in the Lord and outwardly as if in himself, and in the other
inwardly in himself and outwardly as if in the Lord. The latter man is in
evil, the former in good, and yet each is in good and evil both. The
wicked man is in both because he is in the good of civil and moral life
and outwardly, in some measure, in the good of spiritual life, too,
besides being kept by the Lord in rationality and liberty, making it
possible for him to be in good. This is the good by means of which
everyone, even a wicked man, is led by the Lord. It may then be seen that
the Lord keeps evil and good apart, so that one is interior and the other
exterior, and thus provides against their being mingled.
[3] 3. _This cannot be done, however, if man first acknowledges and lives
according to truths of faith and then later recedes and denies them._
This is plain from what has just been said, that all which a man thinks,
speaks and does from the will is appropriated to him and remains; and
that the Lord in His divine providence constantly foresees and disposes
that good shall be by itself and evil by itself, and so can be separated.
They are also separated by the Lord after death. Those who are inwardly
evil and outwardly good are deprived of the good and left to their evil.
The reverse occurs with the inwardly good who outwardly like other men
have acquired wealth, sought distinction, delighted in the mundane, and
indulged some lusts. Good and evil have not been commingled by them,
however, but are separate, like internal and external; they have
resembled the evil in many ways outwardly but not inwardly. Evil is
separate from good in the evil, too, who have appeared outwardly like the
good for piety, worship, speech and deeds, although wicked inwardly. With
those, however, who have first acknowledged and lived by truths of faith
and then lived contrary to them and rejected them and particularly if
they have denied them, good and evil are no longer separate, but mixed.
Such a person has appropriated both good and evil to himself, and thus
combined and mixed them.
[4] 4. _He then mixes good and evil to a point where they cannot be
separated._ This follows from what has just been said. And if evil cannot
be separated from good and good from evil, a person can be neither in
heaven nor in hell. Everyone must be in one or the other; he cannot be in
both; for so he would be now in heaven and now in hell; and in heaven he
would act in hell's favor and in hell act in heaven's favor. He would
thus destroy the life of all around him, heavenly life among the angels
and infernal life among the devils; as a result everyone's life would
perish. For everyone must live his own life; no one lives a life foreign
to his own, still less one opposed to it. Hence, in every man after
death, when he becomes a spirit or a spiritual being, the Lord separates
good from evil and evil from good, good from evil in those who are
inwardly in evil, and evil from good in those inwardly in good. This
accords with His own words:
To every one who has, shall be given, that he may abound, and from him
who has not, shall even what he has be taken away (Mt 13:12; 25:29; Mk
4:25; Lu 8:18; 19:26).
[5] Fifth: _Since good and evil in anyone must be separated and in such a
person cannot be, he is destroyed in all that is truly human._ As was
shown earlier, everyone has what is truly human from rationality, in that
he can see and know what is true and good if he wishes, and from liberty,
enabling him to will, think, speak and do it. But this liberty has been
destroyed along with their rationality in those who have commingled good
and evil in themselves, for they cannot from good see evil, nor from evil
recognize good; the two make one in them. Hence they no longer possess
rationality in any efficacy or power, nor any liberty. For this reason
they are like the sheerest wild fantasies, as we said above, and no
longer look like men but like bones covered with skin, and therefore when
mentioned are referred to not as "he" or "she" but "it." Such is the lot
of those who have commingled sacred and profane in the manner we have
described. There are several kinds of profanation which are not of this
character, however; of them in a later section.
228. No one can profane holy things in the way described who is ignorant
of them. For one who is ignorant of them cannot acknowledge them and then
deny them. Those, therefore, who are outside Christendom and know nothing
of the Lord or of redemption and salvation at His hands do not profane
the holiness of this in not accepting it or even by speaking against it.
The Jews do not profane its sanctity, for from infancy they have no
desire to receive and acknowledge it. It would be otherwise if they
received and acknowledged it and afterwards denied it. This seldom
occurs, however; for many among them acknowledge it outwardly but deny it
inwardly and are like hypocrites. But those who first accept and
acknowledge and later lapse and deny, are the ones who profane holy
things by mingling them with profane.
[2] It is beside the point here that holy things are accepted and
acknowledged in infancy and childhood, as they are by every Christian.
For what pertains to faith and charity is not accepted and acknowledged
at that age from any rationality and liberty, that is, in the
understanding from the will, but only by the memory and from confidence
in the teacher; and if the life is in accord it is so by blind obedience.
If, however, on coming into the exercise of his rationality and freedom,
which one does gradually in growing up to youth and manhood, a man
acknowledges truths and lives by them only later to deny them, he does
mingle the holy with the profane and (as was said above) from being human
becomes a monster. On the other hand, if a man is in evil after attaining
rationality and freedom, that is, after becoming his own master, even in
his early manhood, but later acknowledges truths of faith and lives by
them and remains in them also to the close of life, he does not commingle
the holy and the profane. The Lord then severs the evils of his earlier
life from the good of his later life, as is done with all who repent. Of
this more will be said in what follows.
229. (iii) _There are many kinds of profanation of what is holy, but this
kind is the worst of all._ In the widest sense by profanation all impiety
is meant, and by profaners, therefore, all the impious who at heart deny
God, the holiness of the Word, and consequently the spiritual things of
the church which are essentially holy, and who also speak of them
impiously. We are not now treating of such profaners but of those who
profess God, uphold the holiness of the Word, and acknowledge the
spiritual things of the church (yet most persons do so with the lips
only). These commit profanation for the reason that holiness from the
Word is in them and with them, and this which is in them, part of their
understanding and will, they profane. But in the impious who deny the
Divine and divine things, there is nothing holy which they can profane;
they are profaners, of course, but still not profane as the others are.
230. The profanation of what is holy is meant in the second precept of
the Decalog, "You shall not profane the name of your God," and that it
ought not to be profaned is meant in the Lord's Prayer by "Hallowed be
Thy name." Hardly anyone in Christendom understands what is meant by
God's name. The reason for this is that in the spiritual world names are
not what they are in this world; everyone has a name in accord with the
character of his love and wisdom. As soon as he enters a society or into
fellowship with others he is named according to his character. This can
be done in spiritual language, which is such that it can give a name to
everything, for each letter in the alphabet signifies some one thing, and
the several letters combined in a word, making a person's name, involve
the whole state of the subject. This is among the wonders in the
spiritual world.
[2] From this it is plain that by "the name of God" in the Word, God with
all the divine in Him and proceeding from Him is signified. And as the
Word is the divine proceeding, it is God's name, and as all the divine
things which are called the spiritual things of the church are from the
Word, they, too, are God's name. It may be seen then what is meant in the
second commandment of the Decalog by
You shall not profane the name of God (Ex 20:7);
and in the Lord's Prayer by
Hallowed be Thy name (Mt 6:9).
The name of God and of the Lord has a like signification in many passages
in the Word of either Testament, as in Mt 7:22; 10:22; 18:5, 20; 19:29;
21:9; 24:9, 10; Jn 1:12; 2:23; 3:17, 18; 12:13, 28; 14:14-16; 16:23, 24,
26, 27; 17:6; 20:31; besides other passages, and in very many in the Old
Testament.
[3] One who knows this significance of "name" can know what is signified
by these words of the Lord:
Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a
prophet's reward; whoever receives a righteous man in the name of a
righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward . . . and whoever
will give one of these little ones to drink a cup of cold water only in
the name of a disciple . . . shall not lose a reward (Mt 10:41, 42).
One who understands by the name of a prophet, of a righteous man and of a
disciple only a prophet, a righteous man and a disciple knows only the
sense of the letter in that passage. Nor does he know what is signified
by a prophet's reward, a righteous man's reward, or by the reward given a
disciple for a cup of cold water, when yet by the name and reward of a
prophet the state and happiness of those who are in divine truths is
meant; by the name and reward of a righteous man is meant the state and
happiness of those in divine goods; by a disciple is meant the state of
those who are in a measure of the spiritual things of the church, and by
a cup of cold water is meant a measure of truth.
[4] That the nature of a state of love and wisdom or of good and truth is
meant by "name" is also made evident by these words of the Lord:
He who enters in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep; the porter
opens to him, and the sheep hear his voice; he calls his own sheep by
name, and leads them out (Jn 10:2, 3).
To "call the sheep by name" is to teach and lead everyone who is in the
good of charity according to the state of his love and wisdom; by the
"door" the Lord is meant, as verse 9 makes plain:
I am the door; if a man enters by Me, he will be saved (Jn 10:9).
It is clear from this that for one to be saved the Lord Himself is to be
approached; one who does so is a "shepherd of the sheep" and one who does
not is a "thief"' and a "robber" (so the first verse of the chapter).
231. Profanation of what is holy is predicated of those who know truths
of faith and goods of charity from the Word and also acknowledge them in
some measure, not of those who do not know them, nor of those who
impiously reject them altogether. Therefore what now follows is said of
the former, not of the latter; by the former many kinds of profanation,
lighter and graver, are committed, but they may be summed up in the seven
following.
A first kind of profanation on their part is making jokes from the Word
or about the Word, or of and about the divine things of the church. Some
do this from a bad habit, picking names or expressions from the Word and
mingling them with unseemly and sometimes filthy speech. This cannot be
done without some contempt being added for the Word. Yet the Word in each
and all things is divine and holy; every expression in it stores in its
bosom something divine and by means of it gives communication with
heaven. This kind of profanation is lighter or more grave according to
one's acknowledgment of the sacredness of the Word and to the
unseemliness of the comment into which it is brought by those who jest
about it.
[2] A second kind of profanation by those under discussion is that while
they understand and acknowledge divine truths, they live contrary to
them. Those who only understand profane more lightly, and those who also
acknowledge profane more seriously; for the understanding only teaches
quite as a preacher does, but does not of itself unite with the will, but
acknowledgment does, for one cannot acknowledge anything without the
consent of the will. Still this union with the will varies and the
profanation is according to the measure of it in living contrary to
acknowledged truths. Thus if one acknowledges that revenge and hatred,
adultery and fornication, fraud and deceit, blasphemy and lying are sins
against God and yet commits them, he is therefore in the more grievous of
this kind of profanation. For the Lord says:
The servant who knows his lord's will and does not do it, shall be beaten
with many strokes (Lu 12:47).
And again,
If you were blind, you would not have sin, but you say, We see; therefore
your sin remains (In 9:41).
But it is one thing to acknowledge apparent truths and another to
acknowledge genuine truths. Those who acknowledge genuine truths and yet
do not live by them appear in the spiritual world to be without the light
and warmth of life in voice and speech, as though they were so much
inertness.
[3] A third kind of profanation is committed by those who apply the sense
of the letter of the Word to confirm evil loves and false principles.
This is because the confirmation of falsity is the denial of truth, and
the confirmation of evil is a rejection of good. In its bosom the Word is
nothing but divine truth and good. But this does not appear in the lowest
sense or sense of the letter in genuine truths, except where the Lord and
the very way of salvation are taught, but in clothed truths, called
appearances of truth.
That sense can therefore be seized upon to confirm heresies of many
kinds. But one who confirms evil loves does violence to divine goods, and
one who confirms false principles does violence to divine truths. The
latter violence is called falsification of truth and the former
adulteration of good; both are meant by "bloods"* in the Word. For a
spiritual holiness, which is also the spirit of truth proceeding from the
Lord, is in every particular of the sense of the letter of the Word. This
holiness is injured when the Word is falsified and adulterated. It is
plain that this is profanation.
* Plural in the Hebrew, especially of blood that has been shed. "Both" is
emphatic here, and for the significance of the plural see Arcana
Caelestia, n. 374e and Apocalypse Explained, n. 329(27).