Logopraxis The Third Round

Arcana Coelestia 6806. [3] “To know” involves conjunction, and man is said to be “known” by the Lord insofar as he is conjoined with Him. The Lord also knows those who are not conjoined, nay, the very smallest particulars in every such man (John 2:24-25); but these men, being in evil, are in a different kind of presence, which is as it were absence; although the Lord is not absent, but the man and the spirit who is in evil is he who is absent; and then it is said that the Lord “does not know” them. An image of this condition appears among angels and spirits; they who are alike as to states of life appear near each other, and thus mutually know each other; but they who are unlike as to states of life, appear to each other to be far away, nor do they know each other in the same way. In a word, in the other life likeness of state causes people to appear present, and to be known; and unlikeness of state causes them to appear absent, and not to be known.



Divine Providence 218. (3) Temporal things and eternal things are separated by man, but are conjoined by the Lord. This is true because all things pertaining to man are temporal, and for this reason man may be called temporal; while all things pertaining to the Lord are eternal, and for this reason the Lord is called Eternal. Temporal things are those that have an end and perish; while eternal things are those that have no end and do not perish. Any one can see that the two can be conjoined only through the Lord's infinite wisdom, and thus can be conjoined by the Lord, but not by man. But to make known that the two are separated by man and are conjoined by the Lord it must be shown in this order:



(1) What temporal things are, and what eternal things are.



(2) Man is in himself temporal and the Lord is in Himself eternal; and therefore only what is temporal can proceed from man, and only what is eternal from the Lord.



(3) Temporal things separate eternal things from themselves, and eternal things conjoin temporal things to themselves.



(4) The Lord conjoins man with Himself by means of appearances.



(5) Also by means of correspondences.

Divine Providence 220. (4) The conjoining of temporal and eternal ends in a person is the Lord's Divine providence. As it is not possible, however, for this to fall within the immediate perception of the intellect unless the subject is first reduced into an organized form and developed and demonstrated accordingly, therefore it must be organized as follows:

1. It is of Divine providence that a person by death puts off natural and temporal things and puts on spiritual and eternal ones.



2. Through His Divine providence the Lord conjoins Himself with natural things by means of spiritual ones, and with temporal things by means of eternal ones, in accordance with their applications.



3. The Lord conjoins Himself with their applications through correspondences, and so through appearances according to a person's affirmations of those appearances.



4. This conjunction of temporal and eternal things is Divine providence.



Third Round posts are short audio clips taken from Round 3 comments offered in the online Logopraxis Life Group meetings. The aim is to keep the focus on understanding the Text in terms of its application to the inner life along with reinforcing any key LP principles that have been highlighted in the exchanges.



 

And Jehovah saw that he went aside to see, and God called unto him out of the midst of the bramble, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Behold me! And He said, Draw not nigh hither; pull off thy shoes from upon thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest a ground of holiness is this. And He said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses covered his faces, because he was afraid to look upon God. And Jehovah said, Seeing I have seen the affliction of My people, which is in Egypt, and I have heard their cry from before their taskmasters; for I have known their sorrows; and I am come down to liberate them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to make them come up out of that land unto a land good and broad, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, unto the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.



Exodus 3: 4-8

The saving of the spiritual states in us...



Arcana Coelestia 6858... Before the coming of the Lord into the world, evil genii and spirits occupied all that region of heaven to which the spiritual were afterward taken up; for before the coming of the Lord many such roamed at large and infested the good, especially the spiritual who were in the lower earth; but after the coming of the Lord they were all thrust down into their hells, and that region was set free, and was given for an inheritance to those who were of the spiritual church. It has been frequently observed that as soon as any place is left by good spirits it is occupied by evil ones; and that the evil are driven out of it, and as soon as this is done it again passes to those who are in good.



AC 6854(2)...They who are called “the spiritual” (who are such as can be regenerated only as to the intellectual part, but not as to the will part, and in whose intellectual part therefore a new will is implanted by the Lord, which will is according to the doctrinal things of faith pertaining to their church); these, namely such spiritual men, were saved only by the Lord’s coming into the world. The reason is that the Divine passing through heaven, which was the Divine Human before the Lord’s coming, could not reach them, because the doctrinal things of their church were for the most part not true, and consequently the good which is of the will was not good (see n. 6427). As these could be saved only by the coming of the Lord, and thus could not before be raised into heaven, therefore they were meanwhile kept in the lower earth, in places there which in the Word are called “pits;” which earth was beset about by the hells where are falsities, by which they were then much infested, and yet were guarded by the Lord. But after the Lord came into the world, and made the Human in Himself Divine, then He delivered those who were there in “pits,” and raised them to heaven; and out of them He also formed the spiritual heaven, which is the second heaven. This is meant by the descent of the Lord to the lower regions, and by the deliverance of those who were bound.



AC 6826... “and the angel of Jehovah was seen by him,” signifies the Lord as to the Divine Human; “in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bramble,” signifies love Divine in the truth of memory-knowledge; “and he saw, and behold the bramble burned with fire,” signifies a noticing that the truth of memory-knowledge was full of the good of love Divine; “and the bramble was in no wise consumed,” signifies Divine truth united to Divine good in the natural



6816. The spirits of Mercury are quite different from the spirits of our earth, for the spirits of our earth care not so much for real things as for material, worldly, bodily, and earthly things. Therefore the spirits of Mercury cannot be together with the spirits of our earth, and so whenever they meet them they flee away; for the spiritual spheres which exhale from ...

Arcana Coelestia 6804. And God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. That this signifies by reason of conjunction with the church through the Lord’s Divine Human, is evident from the signification of “covenant,” as being conjunction (of which in what follows); and from the representation of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with whom a covenant was made, as being the Lord’s Divine Human. (.. Abraham represents the Lord as to the Divine Itself, Isaac as to the Divine rational, and Jacob as to the Divine natural.



Divine Providence 218-220 (PDF)



Third Round posts are short audio clips taken from Round 3 comments offered in the online Logopraxis Life Group meetings. The aim is to keep the focus on understanding the Text in terms of its application to the inner life along with reinforcing any key LP principles that have been highlighted in the exchanges.

They love real things



Arcana Coelestia 6809... I wondered at this character of the spirits of Mercury, and I therefore asked why they passed by the magnificent features of the places, and only searched out the facts and doings there? They said they have no delight in looking at material, bodily, and earthly things, but only at real ones. From this it at once appeared that the spirits of that earth relate in the Grand Man to the memory of real things when abstracted from things material and earthly.



The husk or sheath



AC 6816. The spirits of Mercury are quite different from the spirits of our earth, for the spirits of our earth care not so much for real things as for material, worldly, bodily, and earthly things. Therefore the spirits of Mercury cannot be together with the spirits of our earth, and so whenever they meet them they flee away; for the spiritual spheres which exhale from the two are almost opposite. The spirits of Mercury have a saying, that they love what is drawn out from things material, and that they do not desire to look at the sheath, but at things stripped of their sheath, thus at interior things.

What are real things?

AC 1025. The material, worldly, and bodily ideas man has when reading the Word become with angels spiritual and celestial ideas. While man is reading about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for example, the angels do not have Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob in mind at all but those real things which are represented and so meant by them.

AC 3485. The representations that come forth in the other life are appearances, but living ones, because they are from the light of life. The light of life is the Divine wisdom, which is from the Lord alone. Hence all things that come forth from this light are real; and are not like those things that come forth from the light of the world. Wherefore they who are in the other life have sometimes said that the things they see there are real things, and the things which man sees are in comparison not real; because the former things live, and thus immediately affect their life, while the latter things do not live, thus do not immediately affect the life, except insofar and in such a manner as the things in their minds which are of this world’s light conjoin themselves fitly and correspondently with the things of the light of heaven.



AC 5075. That nothing in the universe is anything, that is, a real thing, unless it is from Divine good by Divine truth, that is, by the “Word,” is plain in John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made (John 1:1, 3).



Tendency to love their own intelligence and not apply their knowledge



AC 6813...By reason of their knowledges the spirits of Mercury are more conceited than others, and they were therefore told that although they know innumerable things, still there are infinite things which they do not know; and that if their knowledges should increase to eternity, they would not attain even to a knowledge of generals. They were told also of their conceit and elation of mind, and how unbecoming this is; but they answered that it is not conceit, but only a glorying in their faculty of memory. In this way they can excuse their faults.



AC 6815. I was allowed to insinuate the question whether they did not desire to perform some use by virtue of their knowledges; because it is not sufficient to be delighted with knowledges, seeing that knowledges look to uses, and uses must be the ends. From knowledges alone, I told them, there is no use to them, but only to others to whom they may desire to communicate their knowledges; and it is by no means proper for a man who desires to be wise, to halt in knowledges alone, because these are only instrumental causes, intended to serve in the search for uses,

Conjugal Love 145 ... spiritual purification can be compared with the purification of natural spirits practised by chemists, what they call defecation, rectification, castigation, distillation, refining, decantation and sublimation. Purified wisdom can be compared with alcohol, which is the highest degree of rectified spirit. [3] (c) Spiritual wisdom then has the essential quality of growing warmer the more wisdom is loved, so that it goes on increasing for ever. This happens by the processes of defecation, castigation, rectification, refining, decantation and sublimation; and these take place by means of the process of refining and distancing the intellect from the fallacies of the senses, and the will from the snares of the body.



True Christian Religion 11[3] Everyone can see that a man's knowledge of God is his mirror of God, and that those who know nothing about God do not see God in a mirror with its face toward them, but in a mirror with its back toward them; and as this is covered with quicksilver, or some dark paste, it does not reflect the image but extinguishes it. Faith in God enters into man through a prior way, which is from the soul into the higher parts of the understanding; while knowledges about God enter through a posterior way, because they are drawn from the revealed Word by the understanding, through the bodily senses; and these inflowings meet midway in the understanding; and there natural faith, which is merely persuasion, becomes spiritual, which is real acknowledgment. Thus the human understanding is like a refining vessel, in which this transmutation is effected.



Third Round posts are short audio clips taken from Round 3 comments offered in the online Logopraxis Life Group meetings. The aim is to keep the focus on understanding the Text in terms of its application to the inner life along with reinforcing any key LP principles that have been highlighted in the exchanges.



 

And Moses was feeding the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock behind the wilderness, and came into the mountain of God, to Horeb. And the angel of Jehovah was seen by him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bramble; and he saw, and behold the bramble burned with fire, and the bramble was in no wise consumed. And Moses said, I will therefore go aside, and see this great vision, why the bramble is not burnt.



Exodus 3: 1-4

Arcana Coelestia 6819. But not only is man in the singular the neighbour, but also man in the plural. For a society, smaller or greater, is the neighbour; our country is the neighbour; the church is the neighbour; the Lord’s kingdom is the neighbour; and so above all is the Lord. All these are the neighbour who is to be benefited from charity... These ascending degrees are like the steps of a ladder, at the top of which is the Lord.



AC 6823...Thus the whole, which is all good in the complex, is the neighbour in the first degree, and is that Grand Man which has been treated of at the end of many chapters, which Man is a representative image of the Lord Himself. This Man, that is, the Lord’s kingdom, is loved, when from inmost affection those are benefited who are men through that Man from the Lord, thus with whom is the Lord’s kingdom.



The Lord appears to the mind according to its reception of Him



AC 6832...for when the Lord appears, He appears according to the quality of the man, because a man receives the Divine no otherwise than according to his own quality. Therefore when the Lord appeared on Mount Sinai, He appeared to the people as fire burning even to the heart of heaven, and as darkness, clouds, and thick darkness (Deuteronomy 4:11; 5:22-25also Exodus 19:18). He would have appeared altogether otherwise if the people who were looking on beneath the mountain had not been of such a quality; and because that people was in mere externals...[2] That the Lord appears to everyone according to his quality, is evident from the fact that the Lord appears to those who are in the inmost or third heaven as a sun, from which proceeds ineffable light, because those who are there are in the good of love to the Lord; and that He appears to those who are in the middle or second heaven as a moon, because those who are there are more remotely and obscurely in love to the Lord, being in love toward the neighbor; but in the lowest or first heaven, the Lord does not appear as a sun nor yet as a moon, but only as a light which far surpasses the light of the world. And as the Lord appears to everyone according to his quality, therefore also He cannot appear to those who are in hell except as a dusky cloud and thick darkness; for as soon as the light of heaven which is from the Lord sinks down into any hell, shades and darkness are produced there. From all this it can now be seen that the Lord appears to everyone according to his quality, because according to his reception;



 







Third Round posts are short audio clips taken from Round 3 comments offered in the online Logopraxis Life Group meetings. The aim is to keep the focus on understanding the Text in terms of its application to the inner life along with reinforcing any key LP principles that have been highlighted in the exchanges.