Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 8885

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8885. Remember. That this signifies what is perpetual in the thought, is evident from the signification of "remembering," when said of such a thing as must not in any wise be forgotten, as being what is perpetual in the thought. That is perpetual in the thought which universally reigns there; and that universally reigns with man which is perpetually in his thought, even when he is meditating on other things, or is engaged in business affairs. The thought of man involves many things together, for it is the form of many things which have entered successively. Those things which come to manifest perception are at the time in the midst, and thus in the light of the internal sight, while all other things are then at the sides round about. Those which are in the circuits are in obscurity, and are not manifested except when such objects occur as they are associated with. But the things which are still more remote, and are not on the same plane, but tend downward, are such as the man has rejected and holds in aversion. Such things are evils and falsities with the good, and goods and truths with the evil. [2] In the very thought of man are those things which are perpetually there, that is, which universally reign there, which are his inmost things. From these man regards those things which are not perpetually there (that is, those things which do not yet universally reign) as being outside of himself, and also as beneath himself, and as not yet being akin to him; from which he can then choose and adjoin to himself those things which agree with the inmost things, and from the adjunction and final consociation of which, the inmost things, that is, those which universally reign, are strengthened. This is effected by means of new truths with the good, and by means of new falsities, or by wrong applications of truths, with the evil. [3] Be it known further that that which universally reigns is that which has been insinuated into the will itself, for the will itself is the inmost of man, because it has been formed from his love. For whatever man loves, this he wills, and that which he loves above all things, this he inmostly wills. But the understanding serves to make manifest before others the things which the man wills, that is, which he loves; and serves also to bend the wills of others by ideas variously formed for accommodation thereto. When this is the case, love or affection flows from the will into the intellectual ideas also, and by a certain kind of inspiration vivifies and moves them. [4] With the good these intellectual ideas make a one with the affections which are of the will; but it is otherwise with the evil, for with these the thought and the will do indeed inmostly agree, because the evil which the will wills, the understanding thinks, as falsity that is in agreement with this evil; but this agreement does not appear before men in the world, because from their infancy the evil learn to speak differently from what they think, and to act differently from what they will; in a word, they learn to separate their interior man from their exterior, and in this latter to form another will and also another thought besides that which is in their interior man, and thus by the exterior man to counterfeit good that is quite contrary to the interior man, which at the same instant wills evil and also imperceptibly thinks it. But in the other life the quality of the interior will and thought is manifest as in clear light, for in that life external things are removed, and internal things are laid bare.


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