380. I shall add two accounts of experiences, of which this is the first.
Once I was amazed at the huge number of people who regard nature as the source of creation, and therefore of everything beneath or above the sun. When they see anything, they say, and they give it heartfelt acknowledgment, 'Surely this is due to nature.' And when they are asked why, they say this is due to nature rather than to God, although they still sometimes follow the usual view that God created nature, so they could just as well say that what they see is due to God rather than to nature; they reply, muttering almost inaudibly to themselves, 'What is God but nature?' This false belief that nature created the universe, a piece of madness they take for wisdom, makes them so puffed up that they look on all who acknowledge that God created the universe as ants, creeping along the ground, treading a worn path; and some as butterflies flying around in the air. They call their dogmas dreams, because they see things the others cannot, and they say, 'Who has ever seen God? We can all see nature.'
[2] While I was wondering at the immense number of such people, an angel came and stood beside me, saying, 'What are you thinking about?' I replied, 'How many people there are who believe that nature is the creator of the universe.' 'The whole of hell,' the angel told me, 'is composed of such people; there they are called satans and devils. Those who have formed a firm belief in nature and consequently denied the existence of God are satans; those who have spent their lives in crimes and thus banished from their hearts any acknowledgment of God are devils. But I will take you to the high-schools in the south-western quarter where such people who are not yet in hell live.'
So he took me by the hand and guided me. I saw some cottages containing high-schools, and one building in their midst which seemed to be their headquarters. It was built of pitch-black stones coated with glassy plates giving the appearance of glittering gold and silver, rather like those called mica.* Here and there were interspersed shells with a similar shine.
[3] We went up to this building and knocked. Someone quickly opened the door and made us welcome. He hurried to a table and brought us four books, saying, 'These books contain the wisdom which the majority of kingdoms approve today. This book contains the wisdom favoured by many in France, this by many in Germany, this by some in Holland, and this by some in Britain.' He went on, 'If you would like to watch, I will make these four books shine before your eyes.' Then he poured forth the glory of his own reputation and enveloped the books in it, so that at once they shone as it were with light. But this light immediately vanished from our sight. We then asked, 'What are you writing now?' He replied that at the moment he was bringing out of his stores and displaying the very kernel of wisdom. This could be summarised as: (i) Whether nature is due to life, or life to nature; (ii) Whether a centre is due to an expanse, or an expanse to a centre; (iii) About the centre and expanse of nature and life.
[4] So saying he sat down again at the table, while we strolled around his spacious school. He had a candle on the table because there was no daylight from the sun, but only moonlight as at night. What surprised me was that the candle seemed to roam about and cast its light; but because the wick was not trimmed, it gave little light. While he was writing, we saw images of various shapes flying up from the table onto the walls. In that night-time moonlight they looked like beautiful birds from India. But as soon as we opened the door, in the sunlight of daytime they looked like nocturnal birds with net-like wings. They were apparent truths turned into falsities by adducing proofs which he had ingeniously linked into coherent series.
[5] After seeing this we approached the table and asked him what he was now writing. 'My first proposition.' he said, 'Whether nature is due to life or life to nature'. He remarked that on this point he could confirm either proposition and make it appear true. But because of some lurking fear, which was not explicit, he dared only prove that nature is due to life, that is to say, comes from life, and not the reverse, that life is due to, that is, comes from nature.
We asked politely what was the lurking fear he could not make explicit. He replied that it was the fear of being called by the clergy a nature-worshipper and so an atheist, and by laymen a person of unsound mind, because both parties are either believers from blind faith or people who see that a thing is so by studying supporting arguments.
[6] Then our zealous indignation for the truth got the better of us and we addressed him thus, 'My friend, you are quite wrong. Your wisdom which is no more than an ingenuity of style has led you astray, and your desire for reputation has induced you to prove what you do not believe. Do you not know that the human mind is capable of being raised above the objects of the senses, that is to say, the thoughts engendered by the bodily senses; and when it is so raised it can see the products of life at a higher level and the products of nature below? What is life but love and wisdom? and what is nature but a receiver of love and wisdom, a means of bringing about their effects and purposes? Can these be one, except as principal and instrumental? Light surely cannot be one with the eye, nor sound with the ear. What is the cause of these senses if not life, and what is the cause of their shapes if not nature? What is the human body but an organ for receiving life? Are not all its parts organically constructed to produce the effects willed by love and thought of by the intellect? Surely the body's organs spring from nature, but love and thought spring from life? Are these not quite distinct from each other? Raise the view of your mind a little higher and you will see that emotion and thought are due to life; that emotion is due to love and thought to wisdom, and both of them are due to life, for, as has been said above, love and wisdom constitute life. If you raise your intellectual faculty a little higher still, you will see that love and wisdom could not exist unless somewhere they had a source, and this source is [Love itself and]** Wisdom itself, therefore Life itself. These are God, who is the source of nature.'
[7] Afterwards we talked with him about his second proposition, whether the centre is due to the expanse, or the expanse to the centre. We asked his reason for discussing this subject. He replied that it was in order to enable him to reach a conclusion about the centre and expanse of nature and life, which one was the source of the other. When we asked his opinion, he made the same reply as before, that he could prove either proposition, but for fear of losing his reputation he proved that the expanse was due to, that is to say, was from the centre. 'All the same,' he said, 'I know something existed before there was a sun, and this was distributed throughout the expanse, and this of itself reduced itself to order, so creating centres.'
[8] The zeal of our indignation made us address him again, saying, 'Friend, you are mad.' On hearing this he drew his chair back from the table, and looked fearfully at us, but then listened with a smile on his face. 'What could be more crazy,' we went on, 'than to say the centre is due to the expanse? We take your centre to mean the sun, and your expanse to be the universe; so you hold the universe came into existence without the sun, do you? Surely the sun produces nature and all its properties, which are solely dependent on the heat and light radiated by the sun and propagated through atmospheres? Where could these have been before there was a sun? We will explain their origin later on in the discussion. Are not the atmospheres and everything on earth like surfaces, the centre of which is the sun? What would become of them all without the sun? Could they last a single instant? And what of them all before there was a sun? Could they have continued in existence? Is not continuing in existence perpetually coming into existence? Since then everything in nature depends upon the sun to continue in existence, it follows it must do so to have come into existence. Everyone can see this and acknowledge it from personal experience.
[9] 'Does not what is logically later remain in, as it came into, existence from what is logically earlier? If the surface were earlier and the centre later, would not the existence of what is earlier depend upon what is later? Yet this is contrary to the laws of order. How can the later produce the earlier, or the exterior produce the interior, or the grosser the purer? So how could the surfaces which make up the expanse produce the centres? Anyone can see that this is contrary to the laws of nature.
'We have drawn these proofs from rational analysis to show that the expanse is produced by the centre, and not the reverse; although everyone who thinks correctly can see this for himself without these proofs. You said that the expanse of its own accord came together to produce a centre. Did this happen by chance, that everything fell into such a wonderful and amazing arrangement, so that one thing should be on account of the next, and every single thing on account of human beings and their everlasting life? Can nature inspired by some love and working through some wisdom provide such effects, and can it turn human beings into angels, and make a heaven of angels? Make this supposition and think, and your notion of nature coming into existence from nature will collapse.'
[10] After this we asked him what he had thought and still did about his third proposition, about the centre and the expanse of nature and life. Did he believe that the centre and expanse of nature were the same as the centre and expanse of life?
He said that here he hesitated. He had previously believed that the inward activity of nature was life, and that love and wisdom, which are the essential components of human life, came from this source. It is produced by the heat and light coming from the fire of the sun and transmitted through atmospheres. But now as the result of what he had heard about people living after death he was in doubt, a doubt which alternately lifted up and depressed his mind. When it was lifted up, he acknowledged a centre which had previously been quite unknown to him; when it was depressed he saw a centre which he thought to be the only one. Life was from the centre previously unknown to him, and nature from the centre he thought to be the only one, each centre being surrounded by an expanse.
[11] We said we approved of that, so long as he was willing to view the centre and the expanse of nature from the centre and the expanse of life, and not the reverse. We taught him that above the heaven of the angels there is a sun which is undiluted love; it appears fiery like the sun in the world, and the heat radiating from it is the source of will and love among angels and human beings, and the light radiating from it produces their intellect and wisdom. The products of life are called spiritual, and those of the sun of the world are containers of life, and are called natural. The expanse coming from the centre of life is called the spiritual world, which is maintained in existence by its own sun, and the expanse of nature is called the natural world, which is maintained in existence by its own sun. Now because space and time cannot be attributed to love and wisdom, but their place is taken by states, the expanse surrounding the sun of the heaven of angels is not a spatial extent, though it is in the extent of the natural sun, and is present with living subjects there depending on their ability to receive them, and this is determined by their forms.
[12] But he then asked, 'What is the source of the fire in the sun of the world, the natural sun?' We replied that it was from the sun of the heaven of angels, which is not fire, but the Divine love most nearly radiating from God, who is love itself. Since he found this surprising, we gave this explanation. 'Love in its essence is spiritual fire; that is why fire in the spiritual sense of the Word stands for love. That is why priests in church pray that heavenly fire, meaning love, may fill their hearts. The fire on the altar and the fire of the lampstand in the Tabernacle of the Israelites was nothing but a representation of Divine love. The heat of the blood, or the vital heat of human beings, and of animals in general, comes from no other source than the love which makes up their life. That is why people are fired, becoming warm and bursting into flame, when their love is raised to zeal, or is aroused to anger and exasperation. Therefore the fact that spiritual heat, being love, produces natural heat in human beings to such an extent as to fire and inflame their faces and limbs, can serve as a proof that the fire of the natural sun arose from no other source than the fire of the spiritual sun, which is Divine love.
[13] 'Now because the expanse arises from the centre, and not the reverse, as we said before, and the centre of life, which is the sun of the heaven of angels, is the Divine love most nearly radiating from God, who is in the midst of that sun; and because that sun brought into being the sun of the natural world, and from it the expanse which is called the natural world, it is obvious that the universe was created by the one God.'
After this we went away, and he accompanied us out of the courtyard of his high-school, speaking with us about heaven and hell, and about Divine guidance, showing new powers of sagacity. * Literally 'Mary's ice', cf. German Marienglas. ** These words are not in the original, but were added when this passage was reprinted in TCR 35.