5368. 'Do what he tells you' means provided that obedience exists. This is clear from the meaning of 'doing what someone says' as being obedient. The meaning of this is that good becomes linked to truth in the natural provided that the natural conforms and is obedient. But something must also be said about such a conformity and obedience on the part of the natural. People absorbed solely in worldly interests, more so those absorbed in bodily interests, and more so still those absorbed in earthly ones cannot grasp what is meant by the need for the natural to conform and be obedient. They imagine that what is going on inside a person is the same throughout; thus they do not think of one part within him that commands and another part that obeys.
[2] Yet within him there is an internal man that ought to command and an external man that ought to obey. The latter is obedient when it does not have the world but heaven, not self but the neighbour, as its end in view, consequently when bodily and worldly matters are thought of as means and not as an end. Such are thought of as means and not an end when that person loves his neighbour more than himself, and the things of heaven more than those of the world. When this is so the natural is obedient, the natural being the same as the external man.
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