This is living justly and
honestly for the sake of the Divine, and not for the sake of self and
the world, as ends. [3] But no one can so act until he has been
taught, for example, that there is a God, that there is a heaven and
a hell, that there is a life after death, that God ought to be loved
supremely, and the neighbor as oneself, and that what is taught in
the Word, ought to be believed because the Word is Divine. Without a
knowledge and acknowledgment of these things man is unable to think
spiritually; and if he has no thought about them he does not will
them; for what a man does not know he cannot think, and what he does
not think he cannot will. So it is when man wills these things that
heaven flows into his life, that is, the Lord through heaven, for the
Lord flows into the will and through the will into the thought, and
through both into the life, and the whole life of man is from these.
All this makes clear that spiritual good and truth are learned not
from the world but from heaven, and that one can be prepared for
heaven only by means of instruction. [4] Moreover, so far as the Lord
flows into the life of any one He instructs him, for so far He
kindles the will with the love of knowing truths and enlightens the
thought to know them; and so far as this is done the interiors of man
are opened and heaven is implanted in them; and furthermore, what is
Divine and heavenly flows into the honest things pertaining to moral
life and into the just things pertaining to civil life in man, and
makes them spiritual, since man then does these things from the
Divine, which is doing them for the sake of the Divine.
Pages:
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643