X. The Natural Mind After Death

The teaching in this respect is that "spirits and angels are nothing else than human minds and souls in human form, stripped of coverings . . . which being cast off, the forms of their minds, such as they were inwardly in their bodies, become visible" (CL 192). The risen spirit is the natural mind an organization of thoughts, affections, knowledges, and delights, which together constitute his personality and character. The spirit is not at first seen as to his internal states of mind, but as to the external accommodations by which it had on earth adapted itself to the worldly environment and made itself appear amongst personal and professional acquaintances (AC 10593). it is the mind as formed in the body which now picks up its thread of consciousness under entirely new conditions. It is now housed in a new body. Yet it is not new, but is quite familiar. For his spiritual body was formed inwardly in the material body "formed by the truths and goods which flow in from the Lord through the spiritual world and are received by man inwardly in such things as are of the natural world and which are called civil and moral" (TCR 583). The human mind as a whole is immortal. It is the spirit which lives after death. But while it does no longer remain in a natural body, neither can it be said that it is incorporeal or that it is devoid of the human form. By death, the soul or spirit is liberated from the material body which is buried. It appears in the spiritual world in a spiritual body, or as a man in complete human form. What is thus seen is the Natural Mind, which contains within it the higher degrees. "The interiors which do not die succeed one another in the following order. There is the Sensual, there is the Natural, there is the Spiritual-Natural: these are of the external of man." Then there is "a medium between the external and the internal man, called the Spiritual of the Celestial." Above this in the internal man there is "the Celestial of the Spiritual, the Celestial, and an Inmost which lacks a name because it receives immediately the good and the true which proceed from the Lord." These seven distinct degrees survive in every man, and with each individual one of them has the dominion (SD 4627, cp 5547 if).

The lowest of these surviving degrees is called the Sensual; and it is doubtless this which functions and appears as a spiritual body, equipped with sense-organs and viscera, brains and nerves (LJ post. 316). It is an error to suppose that a soul can exist without a body (DLW 14e). Yet the spiritual body is formed for uses in the spiritual world and does not consist of 'flesh and bones' but of such spiritual things as correspond to these (AC 3815 : 5, 4527, 5078, 3726: 4). It serves as a clothing for the spirit and corresponds exactly to the material body (DLW 391, LJ 30, CU 3e, LJ post. 316, 324). It breathes a spiritual atmosphere, its heart pulses, it senses the things of the spiritual world, its eyes and organs are made of the substance of that spiritual world (DLW 91, 391, 176, HH 462, LJ post. 314, Wis. vii. 2). This substantial body contains a mind a rational and a spiritual. And that spirits might think and will, they have highly organized brains, even as their external senses are organized for spiritual sensations (DLW 135, 334, CL 273, TCR 568, LJ post. 316). But the important thing to note is that this body was formed not of matter, or of any natural substance, but of goods and truths (TCR 583). It is a purely spiritual organism, and as such has nothing in common with space, except the appearance. It is the sensual degree of man's natural mind such as it was on earth. But the conditions under which it now operates are radically different! For now it is cut off from the sense-organs of the material body and the sensations of the natural world. The spirit can therefore not form for itself any new ideas of material things or conditions. The spiritual body can grow in stature in the spiritual world. But the 'corporeal memory' cannot grow beyond the extent which it has at death. The consequence, we learn from the Writings, is that this memory of material ideas is closed up and becomes quiescent together with its merely corporeal affections. Its mental use is over. From having been an active agent of consciousness, it sinks back to become a passive unconscious background of the life of the spirit, which it still serves as an embodiment (AE 775 : 4, Wis. iv.e, AC 6872:3, SD 5552). It is told that the memory of man is inscribed not on the brain alone, but on his whole body. This is to some extent true of the earthly body. But so indelible are the marks which man's every state leaves on his spiritual body that examining angels can after death disclose all his acts by searching his members, beginning with the fingers and hands! (HH 463, ill., SD 5493). Thus the entire natural memory is retained as the basis of his character and as a structural foundation of his spiritual body. But it cannot be reawakened except by permission. And even then its contents is reinterpreted in spiritual light as to its symbolic significance (HH 462: 7). Its natural objects cannot normally be reproduced, "but only the spiritual things adjoined to the natural by correspondences" (HH 464). The conclusion may be safely drawn from all this that the sensory life of spirits is not a mere revival of the memories of earth-life, as thought the ancient Greeks of their "shades" in the underworld. The spirit even as to his body enters upon a new existence, with new experiences of a different type and degree. It is indeed true that the spirit enjoyed a spiritual sensation even while on earth: it saw the knowledges of its memory by a species of mental sight (DLW 404: 4). But this sight was then obscured by the fact that the objects of the memory were closely identified with material things, which fixed the attention upon the natural environment. And no spiritual things no mental states of other men, for instance, could be seen except so far as they were represented by bodily acts or speech or in material clothing. But the sensory life of the risen spirit is vastly different. Not only has the gross mortal body been rejected; but even those natural substances the finest things of nature which were associated in the brain with the natural mind and form a permanent 'limbus' or natural basis for the spirits: even these have 'receded' (DLW 257). The natural mind, now a spirit, tastes a new liberty. It can sense spiritual things without any interfering veil of natural stuff. And the spiritual or substantial man sees or touches what is spiritual, altogether as a material man sees or touches what is material (CL 31, HH 461, LJ post. 323). For spiritual things are homogeneous with spiritual beings (AE 926: 2). As to their bodies and bodily sensations, spirits are "in a lower sphere" (AE 926: 2), a sphere in which interior spiritual things are invested in exterior spiritual things which are created by the Lord in forms which appear like those in the world, forms of apparent space (AE 582e). Sensual spirits even mistake what they see for the material world; yet after some experience, the novitiate spirit is taught and soon accepts the truth that the objects he sees around him, and the other men and women whom he meets, are spiritual forms of the reception of love and wisdom; forms of spiritual life, betokening distinct states of perception and affection. Nothing is sensed which is not of a spiritual origin (HH 582). What is seen is the minds of others, their character, their unique quality. A spirit will see such spiritual objects in the light of his own ruling state which comes from the love that sways him. Yet he may at times see in the light of others: if evil he may nevertheless be brought to see things in the light of angels; if good, he may yet be immersed into the fantasies of evil companions. Light in the spiritual world appears like natural light, except for its stupendous contrasts; still "it does not pass through spaces, like the light of the world, but through the affections and perceptions of truth," thus through a living medium (CLJ 14). Without sensation, there can be no mental life for spirits. Their sensation is far more exquisite which is one of the first things which convince a spirit that he is in the other life (AC 4622: 4, 5078).

This perfection of sensory power is common to good and evil spirits. And there is also a certain instinctive perception which is in various degrees common to all, in that all spirits can know unmistakably the quality of another at his first approach his disposition, faith, love, and character (AC 1388, 1389). For what is sensed by the spiritual senses is the states of other spirits, and in particular the sphere of the activity of their interior memory (AC 2489). And it is on this account that spirits and angels are soon separated from those of opposed character and joined with those who love the same uses (AC 1394 if). There are three planes of life which to judge from what the Writings disclose are common to all spirits and angels. These are the spiritual body, which is on the plane of man's corporeal memory or sensual degree; the life of sense, which with spirits is on the plane of man's imaginative faculty, which is his natural degree and which is an interior form of sensation; and finally speech, which with spirits is formed into word-symbols or distinct imagery on the plane which man uses for abstract thought viz., the interior natural memory. Indeed their speech is said to be one of ideas, and these are sonorous, spoken like words, and are understood by all angels and spirits, even though the meaning is only conveyed where there is sufficient wisdom to grasp it. An exception should here be noted. Those angels who are properly called 'celestial' do not store up abstractions in their memory and therefore do not converse so much by words as by bodily gestures and facial expressions (SD 5587, 5597). The universal language which all spirits and angels speak is a speech of ideas. It is the activity of the interior natural memory which each spirit either brings along from the world or develops after death. If man has thought abstractly in the world, such speech does not have to be learnt, although infants after death are taught to talk by their nurses (AR 29, HF 236, 334, AC 243). In the spiritual world such ideas are audible, and conveyed as words by a modification of the spiritual aura which there serves as air (AC 7089: 2, DLW 176, HH 235, cf. 238). This medium is a spiritual analogue of our air; it is distinct from the spiritual ether by which light is conveyed to spirits and angels; it is a created and substantial medium common to all spirits; yet it carries not motion, but perceptions of rational ideas.

Sensation and speech are the means of arousing and conveying ideas. The mind cannot grow and develop without the use of the senses. With man the mind is stimulated through the corporeal memory; but since this plane of the memory becomes quiescent after death and cannot change or grow, spirits receive all their sensory experience into the Interior Memory. Whatsoever they learn in the spiritual world is stored in this Interior Memory (AC 2490, 9841:2, 9922:2, SD 3143 3144, HH 469). But even when entering the spiritual world, the spirit of man finds his interior memory amply furnished. In it are lodged all those things which have become of his love and life, every thing that was a part of his rational. These are present in vivid detail yet are felt as his very disposition or instinctive nature (AC 3843: 2, SD 4167, 78, 3666 if). With a good spirit these are among the treasures of the kingdom of heaven which await man after death, his spiritual wealth. The ideas of this memory are marvelously distinct, and from these he thinks and reflects (SD 4716). The reflection of spirits differs widely from that of men. For the interior memory which spirits use for their thinking and by which they cultivate their Rational (HH 469), is not ordered, like ours, in categories of space and time. They live from their affections, and thus live in the present, and do not concern themselves about the past. Yet the purer angels have a most perfect recollection of past things (AC 2493, SD 3234, 3144). But Swedenborg observed about spirits that they do not remember when or whence they have learnt what they know (SD 3783). The time-sequence is lacking, but their memory is rearranged according to rational order and oriented from their ruling love (AC 9723, 9386, 2490, DP 277). Therefore the thoughts of spirits are not concerned with times and spaces, but instead they think of states and their progression (AC 4901: 3). The Interior Memory is formed inwardly in the rational degree of the Natural Mind (AC 2480, 1900: 2, 4038: 3). Its ideas are not called knowledges, but 'truths' or 'rational appearances' (AC 5212, 3404). But since the Rational is developed differently in every man, and to different degrees, it follows that the diversity of character which is observable in spirits and angels is primarily due to the contents of their Interior Memory which is the living record of their rational life, their free choice and judgment. For the Interior Memory is beyond the sphere of fear and compulsion and from it man and spirit act spontaneously (DP 139, 136e). When a man regenerates, it is in the Rational that the new soul commences as rational good from which the body of the new man is then formed (AC 3570). We are also taught that with the good there is secretly stored up angelic intelligence and wisdom in the interiors of the Interior Memory, or in its inmosts (AC 2494, HH 467). While all spirits have an Interior Memory, which is therefore called a 'spiritual' memory (AC 9841, SD 353, 1983), yet there are three degrees within it, or three memories answering as to quality to the three heavens and named the spiritual-natural memory, the spiritual memory, and the celestial memory (SD 1079). We call these planes 'memories,' but they are the living forms of the life of natural, spiritual, and celestial angels, respectively. They are the planes developed through regeneration within the rational mind, discreted by the ruling loves of heaven. In an evil spirit it is the natural mind only that is "opened," and is perverted as to one or more of its three levels the natural-rational, the middle natural or imaginative, and the sensual (Cp TCR 34e, DLW 275).

Here we must face an important question. The general teaching is that man's mind has three degrees, the Natural Mind, the Spiritual Mind, and the Celestial Mind. An unregenerate man remains in the natural degree; but by regeneration his spiritual mind can be opened, and even the celestial; and "when man puts off the natural degree, which he does by death, he comes into that degree which has been opened within him in the world" (DLW 236, 239). While on earth he cannot enter the spiritual degrees, even if they have been opened. But after death he comes into the spiritual mind, consciously enjoying its wisdom and delights (DLW 252). And yet the Interior Memories by which angels think or are conscious are formed within the Rational degree which is a part of the natural mind. It is true that the natural mind after death is very different in its activity and scope, since all natural substance 'recedes' at death (DLW 257). The entire angel is lifted as to all his senses and consciousness into the spiritual world and into the sphere of a thought which, while he was on earth, had been transacted beyond the scope of his observation. Certainly, also, he leaves the natural world, its sensual appearances and cares. But has he left or "put off' the natural degree? Let us make clear that this question is not one to give the angels much concern, except as a theoretical matter. They are not self-conscious or aware of their superior wisdom or anxious about the particular degree of their love. Yet the question must be answered if we are to understand what the Writings teach about regeneration, which might otherwise seem so confused that large groups of teachings may become meaningless. What will now be said must be taken as an effort to interpret the doctrine according to our present light. The leading idea in our explanation is that just as our Natural Mind contains a conscious realm of thought and also an interior realm of supersensible or imperceptible thought from which our inner judgments originate; so does the mind of every angel similarly contain a plane of conscious thought and also a supersensible realm wherein are hidden the sources of his intelligence, wisdom, and love. With the angel, the conscious part of his mind is the Interior Memory, which was indeed formed in the unperceived depths of his natural mind while he lived on earth. Thus the unconscious interiors of man's rational are after death opened for vivid awareness. But within this conscious thought of the Interior Memory, the angel possesses a series of interior degrees which are beyond his ken or control. These, with the angel, are a Rational Internal, an Internal Intellectual, and an Inmost "which lacks a name." The angel thinks in his Interior Memory from his Rational Internal. No angel or man can think from his Internal Intellectual: this the Lord alone could do when He was on earth (AC 1904, 1901, 1914, 1935, 2053, 2545e). The whole mind of the angel is spiritual. But the conscious part of this mind was formed interiorly in the rational mind on earth, and serves him in heaven as a Natural mind. And since this 'spiritual-natural' mind of the angel was formed in the rational mind of the natural man, it cannot be supposed that it is pure or devoid of the perversions which are from birth inherent in man's natural. In his preparatory studies, Swedenborg called the rational mind 'the mixed intellect,' since it is excited by the animus and the sensual affections and often obscured by ignorance, conjecture, and sensory appearances (R. Psych. 32, 136, 306). In the year 1748, after his spiritual eyes had been opened, some interior spirits came to him to dispute his statement 'that the proprium of man, spirit, and angel was in itself nothing but merely evil.' "They insinuated that they had a proprium which was not evil, viz., an inmost mind as well as a more interior (intimam, tum, intimiorem), for the inmost gave to the more interior the faculty to become celestial and spiritual." Swedenborg had never doubted but that man had an inmost mind which animals do not have. But the spirits claimed that these internal minds were their proprium. Swedenborg then explained that the only mind which was theirs was the natural mind, and this was altogether perverted; yet if a spirit or angel were deprived of his proprium which belonged to his natural mind (interior as well as lower), he would be entirely deprived of life. In order that this may not happen, the propriate or natural mind is not effaced or nullified but made obsequious to the truly spiritual and celestial mind, and what is proper to him is disposed into a form comparable to a rainbow in which the colors draw their origin from white and black the black representing the evils of the proprium. Man can therefore not claim as his own the two innermost minds, by which the Lord gives the faculty to the natural mind to become what it is : "for neither Ivan, spirit, or angel knows anything of these minds" (SD 3474). In an earlier note, Swedenborg comments on the fact that the interiors (intimiora) of the angels are not vitiated by hereditary and acquired evils, but only those things which are of the natural mind. This easily gives the impression that the angels are without faults, and thus are pure and holy. But this notion, he tells, soon vanished when it was realized that no angel could be in the interior heaven, or in the more interior, or in the inmost, without at the same time being in the natural mind which belongs to that heaven. The natural mind cannot be put off because then they would lose the background of their individuality and would no longer be angels! but the faults and vices of the natural must be brought into harmony and correspondence with the interior things, and apart from this correspondence there would be no holiness. And such is the natural mind, that not to all eternity could such correspondence occur if the Lord did not continually bring it about. By such correspondence, angels seem to themselves not to be natural spirits when yet they are natural; for in certain states the natural seems to disappear, as if it were rendered transparent or absent; so that interior things from the spiritual and celestial minds then are displayed (SD 2157, 2158, 2292). The natural which is here spoken of includes not only the corporeal memory (HH 345, SD mm. 4645 f, SD 5552), but also the things of the interior memory, and thus the discrete degree of the rational mind in which the conscience of the angel had been based.³² It is therefore said that "not even the least idea of the interior mind can be reduced to full correspondence," still less all of the ideas taken together as to all their indefinite variations of persuasion and affection (SD 2159). The angelic mind is therefore also in need of continual purification. It is said that all spiritual purification is effected in the natural. What is thought of in the external man comes to manifest perception while man is in the world and can therefore be corrected and purified "in the natural which is in the world." But the thought which is transacted in the internal man is spiritual in form and cannot be purged of evil and error except "in heaven" (AC 10237, 10049). This is being done by the Lord during man's regeneration, and with the angels it is continued in their natural to eternity. For each new state will be born in their natural mind, and will partake of the human errors and vices of the proprium. One mode by which this purification of angelic ideas is effected is alluded to in the Writings. For it is revealed that while the "Word is being read by man, the arcana of its internal sense are so luminously presented to the perception of the angels that any ideas they may have formed from other sources or from past scruples or lingering doubts and obscurities, are gradually dissipated, and new ideas are insinuated which are in conformity with the light of truth in which the angels are. This is especially the case with the spiritual angels (AC 2249e). What the angels thus evolve from the man's reading of the Word seems to them as if it came from their own thoughts (De Verbo xviii). It is said that the angels have their wisdom from the Word. They have the Word, written in the spiritual language; but they read it and understand it in its internal meaning. The Word was written in heaven before it came to men (AE 1073, 1074). Yet new truth is aroused in the angelic mind through association with man on earth. "The natural thought of man is a plane in which all things of angelic wisdom close: it is a foundation like that of a house." Such as this plane is, such their wisdom becomes. The angels who are thus with men choose their own ultimates for all the minds of the human race on earth are open to them. Of the men with whom they are, they are ignorant, yet they direct their thought to various quarters and perceive here obscurity, there wisdom.

And where there is thought from the Heavenly Doctrine among men, the angels come into the greatest clearness (SD 5607 5617). Angels thus perceive the interiors of men's thoughts as if they were their own. But spirits turn to man's material ideas and base their own ideas upon the man's notions of places and personalities.³³

It is for the sake of the heavens that our Word is so written that its spiritual senses speak of the various degrees of the angelic mind. When the Word speaks of Abram and Isaac and Israel, of Joseph and Benjamin and Judah, the angels thereby perceive the relationships between the interiors of their minds, and thus between the heavens. The Arcana Coelestia contains material for a study of these degrees in comparison with each other. Here we can only record that the conscious thought of the natural angels is on the spiritual-natural plane, which with man serves for a Rational Internal that is almost always beyond the reach of his conscious perception. In the same way the conscious thought of the spiritual angels is in the Exterior Rational which is called the Spiritual of the Celestial and is represented by 'Benjamin' who signifies "new truth" which is the source of the growth of the church; but which with man serves only as an Internal Intellectual from which man can never think but only derive the faculty of thinking. The celestial angels, finally, have their conscious mind in the Interior Rational, also called "the Celestial of the Spiritual," represented by 'Joseph.' This plane acts as a Rational Internal for the spiritual angels and as an Internal Intellectual for those of the natural heaven. With these the higher degrees are shut up (Cp SD 5547 if, AC 8443). Although the general doctrine is that "there are three degrees of heaven or of angels in the heavens," one passage in the Spiritual Diary describes seven degrees. The internal angels are of three degrees and the external of three degrees; while the celestial-spiritual, which serve as a medium between these two classes, constitute a seventh degree (SD 5547, 5550).³⁴ The Internal Intellectual mentioned above is not identical with the Inmost of man. Yet it seems to refer to a plane or faculty above human thought (SD 5548) wherein the Lord can operate for His own ends with reference to man's state, and which He continually fills with mutual love and charity, and with wisdom, intelligence, and faith.³⁵ This degree the Lord "opens" and prepares when man, in his rational, receives its gifts. The Lord can prepare this unconscious but determinant plane only so far as man, in the inmost conatus of his thought (AC 1937: 3), invites Him to do so. But with every man, the Lord acts through it from the Inmost to prepare "remains" celestial, spiritual, and moral in the various interior degrees of his Rational, i.e., in his interior memory. On the basis of such remains man can invite the presence of the heavens. The thoughts of the angels of the heavens are discretely different according to the degrees of their ruling loves. The celestial have a thought which consists not of ideas, but of affections most marvelously varied and modified (De Verbo 8). Their thought is generally not abstract but determined to life (SD 5887). The spiritual have spiritual ideas which are devoid of anything personal or limited and are so purely abstract that they are incomprehensible to lower angels. Yet they contain supernal beauty and comprise tender affections which are communicated beyond the bounds of their heaven. The ideas of those in the lowest heaven are still somewhat connected with persons and historical circumstances, and can therefore be perceived to some little extent by man when he is in states of illustration or interior reflection (AC 8443, cp. Wis. vii: 5). The ideas of the higher angels can however be expressed in their general form, as doctrines of truth, or as principles, to the angels of lower spheres; so that a spiritual-natural idea is said to be made up of myriads of higher ideas. These interior ideas may be represented to the minds of others in correspondent visual imagery, or by 'spiritual representations'; and also to the senses, as spiritual creations which the eyes of the spirit may perceive sensually while his mind interprets them spiritually. Yet it should also be observed that angels do not seem to themselves to live among abstractions, but among concrete and permanent realities. Nor do they always remain in the heights. They descend at intervals, as do men, to ordinary things of personal life. They retain powers of natural reason also, and some can reason and calculate with lightning speed (AC 10771).

The minds of angels, spirits, and men differ only in degrees of perfection. All have corresponding faculties and degrees. All have bodies and senses, a memory of what is experienced without them and within them. All have rational thought and also a supersensible Rational from which their perceptions emerge. They have like men an Internal Intellectual which provides the faculties of will and reason and stores the special gifts of wisdom and love which the Lord alone provides as the source of each individual's powers and endowments. Within and beyond these realms of the mind there is with every human being an "Inmost," the habitable of the Divine presence and the spiritual receptacle of life immediately from God.

All that makes man human, and thus all the good and truth which makes man's mind human, proceeds from the Lord as the Divine Human and is given by influx. Man has no life of his own, for life is in itself infinite and Divine, and angels and men are merely receptions. Life is not made finite by being received in finite vessels, but remains infinite while proceeding into its creation. Yet the reception makes the finite to appear alive and it is this appearance which is called "human life" (DLW 53). Life proceeds from the infinite Divine as Divine truth, for truth is the form of good. But in order that this Divine truth may be received by man, it must be accommodated. Accommodation is effected by a transmission of the Divine influx through finite substances created or produced by the Divine (DP 219: 2). This is described in the Arcana Coelestia as follows:

The truth which proceeds immediately from the Lord, being from the infinite Divine Itself, cannot possibly be received by any living substance which is finite, thus not by any angel; and therefore the Lord created successives by which as media the Divine truth that proceeds immediately can be communicated. But the first in succession from this is more full of the Divine than can as yet be received by any living substance which is finite . . . and therefore the Lord created another successive through which the Divine truth which proceeds immediately might be in part received: this successive is the truth Divine which is in heaven. The first two are above the heavens and are as it were radiant girdles of flame which surround the Sun which is the Lord. Such is the successive order down to the heaven nearest the Lord which is the third heaven, where are those who are innocent and wise... (AC 7270). The first two successives are here identified with the radiant belts around the Sun of heaven, and are said to be "above the heavens" and not "received" by any living finite substance, thus not by any angel. These successives are limited or finite substances, and are spiritual and thus living, although not "living a Se"; but the Divine life is not "received'' by the successives, but only transmitted. They exhibit no living human response, and are not organized as receptive vessels. But the third successive accommodates the Divine truth for reception, and is said to be the Divine truth in heaven. This first reception is not a conscious one. It is taught that with every man there is a Human Internal which is "the very first form from which man becomes and is man. The heaven that is nearest the Lord is composed of these human internals; but this is above even the inmost angelic heaven" (AC 1999). These human internals "belong to the Lord Himself" but "have no life in themselves," but are the inmost forms receptive of the Lord's life (ibid., LJ 25, ISB 8).

This human internal is present in all men, presumably in equal perfection. It is referred to as an Inmost, or as a supreme degree in which the Lord "makes His entrance to man and His veriest abode with him," or into which the Divine inflows "first and most proximately" and from which it disposes the lower interiors which belong to the spiritual and the natural man and which follow according to the degrees of order (HH 39, LJ 25). What is arranged and disposed by the Lord in this Inmost "does not inflow manifestly into the perception of any angel whatsoever, because it is above his thought and transcends his wisdom" (HH 39). The interiors of the spiritual man which are below the Inmost are the Internal Intellectual and the Rational Internal referred to in the Spiritual Diary (nos. 5548, 5549). The distinction between the Inmost and these lower internal degrees is not always made. The Divine truth accommodated by the third "successive" (AC 7270) comes to conscious perception only in the Rational of the celestial angels (SD 5548, AC 8443). When contrasted with the conscious mind of the angel, the Inmost is called the Soul³⁶ and is defined as "a superior spiritual substance" which "receives influx immediately from God," whereas the mind is an inferior spiritual substance which receives influx mediately through the spiritual world (ISB 8). In his earlier notations in the Adversaria, Swedenborg made clear that "the Soul, properly so called" is the inmost substance from which man is formed and which is acted upon only by God (WE 649, 1147 f). It is there called a supra-celestial essence, purely spiritual; and thus different from the soul of brutes which "partakes of the spiritual and the natural" (WE 919). Thus the Inmost of each man is in the Lord's own keeping and is held inviolable not only from man himself but from all influences from the spiritual world. Here the Lord concentrates the influxes which His infinite foresight ordains for man's life. And from this Inmost, it would seem, He inflows into the Internal Intellectual and the super-conscious Rational to prepare the gifts of love and wisdom in accommodation to man's progressive needs, so far as man is able to receive the love and perceive the wisdom. The Divine influx itself must however be distinguished from the spiritual receiving organ which is man's soul or spirit (AC 1594: 5). The influx which is pure mutual love is Divine, and is the Lord present and laboring in man. The receiving organ, from the Inmost down to the spiritual body, is the interior man which becomes receptive of mutual love in the degree of his regeneration. So far as it receives this influx, it contains an "internal man," a new and heavenly "proprium"; for man then enters with his consciousness and will into what is of the Lord's own order and provision, and feels this as his own. And he then comes into possession of his spiritual heritage the kingdom which the Lord has prepared for him "from the foundation of the world." By evil, man is as it were separated from his Human Internal; yet this separation is never absolute, but is a dissent and disagreement on the part of his rational and external man. If it could ever be absolute, man could not become immortal (AC 1999). Hence it is that the third "successive" of Divine truth which flows into the highest angelic heaven and which creates the lower degrees of heaven and other successives even down to the last of nature, "also" flows in down to the ultimates of order "without successive formation" (AC 7270). The inmost soul of man thus rules all the planes below it and builds and maintains the body even before the mental planes are developed or "opened"; and this with the evil as well as with the good. The operations of the organs of the body and the spontaneous processes within the mind are mostly outside of man's control (DP 180, 181, 120). Through his soul, even a devil is maintained in the general human form, except so far as his evils have scarred and deformed it. Much might be said on the subject of the Human Mind, for which no place could be found in our brief survey. One of these aspects of the mind is the relation of the Will to the Understanding to which a long treatment is devoted in the Divine Love and Wisdom. Other related aspects, much discussed in the Writings, concern the process of Regeneration. The mind of man is created as the means by which the Lord may conjoin mankind to Himself, and give of His Divine love to others outside of Himself. To acknowledge this is the first thing of human wisdom. For only so can we dedicate this marvelous and complex spiritual organism to the discernment of His Divine ends and to the furtherance of the uses of His kingdom, here and forever.