SD 2054, 2056 - when we read, or try to read, the Lord's Word

SD 2054
When he was there, I read in Deut. 1 respecting the Jewish people,
how they sent messengers to explore the land and what was in it,
all which were turned by the celestials into a spiritual sense,
so that they perceived nothing from the literal sense,
but only from the spiritual.
The spirit in question then said to me
that he knew nothing of what I was reading,
but that he heard wonderful things;
for there was an interior sense,
namely, that by the mountains of the Amorites
was signified the world of evil spirits,
through whom the way led to heaven,
and by the river of Eshkol,
where there were fruits and clusters of grapes,
[was signified] the interior heaven.
This, he said, was the true sense of the words in that passage,
and not the literal sense, of which he could perceive nothing.
From this we may judge how the sense of the Lord's Word
is elevated towards the interiors of the heavens,
so that nothing of the literal sense remains . . ..

SD 2056
It may now be known
that the sense of the letter is far more penetrative
when the mind does not inhere in that sense,
as the Lord then flows in with an interior sense,
which illuminates and makes perspicuous (plain, clear)
the literal sense as to what it signifies;
which is not the case while the mind,
as with critics,
is absorbed in letters and words.
(May 23, 1748)