Divine Love and Wisdom (Rogers) n. 413

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413. (13) By a power imparted to it by love or the will, wisdom or the intellect can be elevated so as to admit from heaven such matters as are matters of light and perceive them. We have already shown here and there above that a person can perceive the secrets of wisdom when he hears them. This faculty of the human being is the faculty called rationality, which everyone has from creation. It is the ability to understand matters interiorly and to draw conclusions regarding what is just and equitable and what is good and true, and it is this faculty that distinguishes the human being from animals. This, therefore, is what we mean by the statement that the intellect can be elevated and admit from heaven such matters as are matters of light and perceive them. [2] The fact of this can also be seen in a kind of reflected image in the lungs, because the lungs correspond to the intellect. It can be seen in the lungs from their porous substance, which consists of bronchial tubules terminating in tiny cavities that are the recipient vessels of air during respiration. These are the elements with which thoughts are united by correspondence. This spongy substance is such that it can be caused to expand and contract in a twofold mode, in one mode together with the heart, and in the other almost separate from the heart. It is caused to expand and contract in a mode synchronous with heart by the pulmonary arteries and veins, which extend only from the heart, and it is caused to expand and contract in a mode almost separate from the heart by the bronchial arteries and veins, which extend from the vena cava and aorta. These latter vessels lie outside the heart. [3] This is the case in the lungs because the intellect can be elevated above the native love which corresponds to the heart and admit light from heaven. But even when the intellect is elevated above the native love, it does not separate from it, but takes from it that element called an affection for knowing and understanding for the sake of some measure of honor, glory or material gain in the world. This objective in some measure clings to every love as an outer layer, from which love shines on the surface, but through which it shines in the wise. We have cited these particulars regarding the lungs in order to corroborate the fact that the intellect can be elevated so as to admit and perceive such matters as are matters of the light of heaven, for there is between them a complete correspondence. To see them from the perspective of their correspondence is to see the lungs from the perspective of the intellect, and the intellect from the perspective of the lungs, and so to see from the two together a corroboration.


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