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By such a false spiritual light are those influenced who confirm falses until they seem as truths, and afterwards are said and believed to be truths: all such see backwards, and not forwards."
The Science of Correspondences enables us to see that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are purely allegorical, and in their spiritual and true sense treat of the regeneration of man, and his fall through the seduction of his lowest or sensual nature and appetites, as men are seduced to-day; and of a flood of evils and falses, similar to the flood which threatens to overwhelm the Christian world, at least in our land, at this day; and a New Church as an ark of safety.
That he has distinguished all things in the spiritual world into genera, species, and differences, and has collected together into heaven all goods and truths, and into hell all evils and falses, and has arranged the latter in an order diametrically opposite to the former, may appear from what is explained in a work concerning HEAVEN AND HELL, published in London in the year 1758.
The fearful evils which I have hastily named in the preceding pages, and many others which cause the prevailing deformities, diseases, insanity, and premature deaths, are not to be dragged along into the Church of the New Jerusalem now descending from God out of heaven; but our race is to be purified, renovated, and developed into a healthy, noble, symmetrical, graceful manhood by the new inflowing of truths from the Lord, pointing out the evils and falses which are causing the present suffering and wretchedness, and calling on men and women to shun such evils and falses as sins against God.
FALLACIES of the senses are the darkness of truths, 152*. FALSES, all, have been collated into hell, 479. See Evils. FALSIFICATIONS of truth are spiritual whoredoms, 77, 80. FATHER. The Lord in the Word is called Father, 118. Most fathers, when they come into another life, recollect their children who have died before them, and they are also presented to, and mutually acknowledge, each other, 406.
In the Word, physicians, the art of physic and medicine, signify preservation from evils and falses.... That in the Word, physicians, the art of physic and medicine, signify preservation from evils and falses, is manifest from the passages where they are named.... Hence it is evident what medicine signifies, viz., that which preserves from falses and evils; for when the truth of faith leads to the good of love, it preserves, because it withdraws from evils."
Thus the Creator of the universe has distinguished goods and their truths, and in like manner evils and their falses, after they arose.
After this I asked them, whether all who are in any concupiscence, are also in the phantasy thereof; they replied, that those are in the phantasy of their respective concupiscences, who think interiorly in themselves, and too much indulge their imagination by talking with themselves; for these almost separate their spirit from connection with the body, and by vision overflow the understanding, and take a foolish delight as if they were possessed of the universe and all that it contains: into this delirium every man comes after death, who has abstracted his spirit from the body, and has not wished to recede from the delight of the delirium by thinking at all religiously respecting evils and falses, and least of all respecting the inordinate love of self as being destructive of love to the Lord, and respecting the inordinate love of the world, as being destructive of neighborly love.
Hence it follows, that those who are in evils, and thence in falses, have formed in themselves an effigy of hell, which suffers torment in heaven from the influx and violent activity of one opposite upon another; for infernal love is opposite to heavenly love, and consequently the delights of those two loves are in a state of discord and enmity, and whenever they meet they endeavor to destroy each other."
The opposite of light is darkness; the opposite of heat is cold; of the times of the world the opposites are day and night, summer and winter; of affections the opposites are joys and mourning, also gladnesses and sadnesses; of perceptions the opposites are goods and evils, also truths and falses; and of sensations the opposites are things delightful and things undelightful.
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