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Chapter VIII. The Mind in Three Degrees.
 THIS
diagram presents the three degrees of the mind B C D as described
in Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and concerning the
Divine Wisdom,-
"The nature of man's initiament or primitive in the womb,
after conception, no one can know because it cannot be seen, and it is
also of spiritual substance, which is not visible by natural light. Now
because some in the world are such that they direct the mind even to an
investigation of man's primitive which is the seed of the father from which
conception takes place, and because many of them have fallen into the error
that man is in his fullness from his first which is the beginning [inchoamentuni]
and is afterward perfected by growth; therefore the quality of this
beginning or first, in its form, has been disclosed to me. This was done
by the angels, to whom it was revealed by the LORD. They, have made this
of their wisdom, and the joy of their wisdom is to communicate to others
what they know; and therefore by leave granted them, they presented before
my eyes in the light of heaven a type of man's initial form, which was
as follows:- There appeared something like a very small image of a brain
with a delicate delineation of a certain face in front without appendage
: this primitive in its upper convex part was compacted of contiguous globules
or spherules, and every one of these spherules was compacted of still smaller
ones, and every one of these again of the smallest; it was thus of three
degrees; anteriorly in the flat part something delineated appeared for
the face. The convex part was covered about with a very thin membrane or
meninge, which was transparent; this convex part, which was a type of a
brain in its leasts, was also divided into two cushions. as it were, as
the brain in its largest [forrns] is divided into two hemispheres; and
I was told that the- right cushion was the receptacle of love and the left
the receptacle of wisdom, and that by marvelous interweavings they were
like consorts and comrades. It was farther shown in the heavenly light
which beamed upon it, that the structure of this little brainlet was interiorly,
as to its situation and fluxion, in the order and in the form of heaven,
and that its exterior structure was, on the contrary, opposed to that order
and that form. After these things had been seen and shown, the angels said
that the two interior degrees 1 which were in the order and form of heaven,
were the receptacles of love and wisdom from the LORD.; and that the exterior
degree, which was in the opposition to these, contrary to the order and
form of heaven, was the receptacle of infernal love and insanity. This
is because man by hereditary taint is born into all kinds of evil, and
these evils reside there in the extremities; and that taint cannot be removed
unless the two superior degrees are opened, which, as before stated, are
receptacles of love and wisdom from the LORD. And as love and wisdom are
the real man, - for love and wisdom in their essence are the LORD, - and
as this primitive of man is their receptacle it follows that in this primitive
there is a continuous effort toward the human form, which it also gradually
assumes."- DLW 432
This primitive or beginning of man is also described in Divine
Wisdom in Apocalypse Explained, III, 4.
In the above extract the inmost A is neither described
nor mentioned, yet we know from the Writings that it is within this primitive,
it being the very primitive of the primitive.
The two higher degrees B and C constitute
the whole internal mind and represent that mind in its two aspects of celestial
and spiritual, and in the individual are equivalent to the two kingdoms
in heaven; and they produce from themselves the external or natural degree
D as their ultimate and base, answering to the world of spirits.
In this passage (DLW 432) these three degrees
are presented in their strictly initial form as at conception. The two
interior or superior degrees are represented in the diagram by B
and C and the external degree by D. In Divine Wisdom III,
4, the two higher degrees B and C are said to be in the order
and form of heaven, but the mass of the lowest degree, by virtue of hereditary
decline, in the order and form of hell.
In Divine Love and Wisdom we read,
"The natural mind of man consists of spiritual substances,
and at the same time of natural substances; from it; spiritual substances
thought is produced, but not from its natural substances."- DLW 257.
Of this natural mind, only that part which is organized of
spiritual substances and called the lowest degree of the human primitive
described above, is here represented by D; that part composed of
natural substances which the above primitive afterward takes on from the
mother, is not here separately drawn, though included in E, but
it will be distinctly presented in Diagram XV.
The reader will bear in mind that the human primitive
which is the paternal seed, already described from the Writings and here
represented by B C D, is composed entirely of spiritual substance
not visible in natural light; the material substance commonly regarded
as the human seed is not the true seed, but merely its containant and preservative.
(TCR 103, 92.)
NOTE. - The initial form of man in a type seen in the light
of heaven, (described in DLW 432), is not man's inmost presented
in Diagram III and meant in Heaven and
Hell 39 and other like passages in the Writings, but is the mind
derived from the inmost, - the mind with its three degrees, in a germinal
state.
This agrees with the fact that the "inmost, the LORD'S
veriest abode in man," (HH 39), is above the sphere of angelic
consciousness, and with the fact that the heaven of human internals," which
is the complex of these supreme degrees of all the individual angels, is
above the angelic heaven (AC 1999), because, above angelic consciousness,
above the highest degree of the mind of the angel, as distinguished from
his soul. (See Inf. 8.)
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