DP = Divine Providence

Divine Providence is the Government of
the Lord's Divine Love and Wisdom

DP 3 [1]

(1)  The universe
with each and all of its constituents
was created out of Divine love
by means of Divine wisdom. 

In our treatise titled "Divine Love and Wisdom",
we demonstrated that the Lord from eternity,
who is Jehovah, is, as to His essence,
Divine love and Divine wisdom.
We demonstrated, too,
that He created the universe
and everything in it
out of Himself.

In the aforesaid treatise we demonstrated as well
that love cannot do anything apart from wisdom,
nor wisdom anything apart from love.
For love apart from wisdom,
or the will apart from the intellect,
is incapable of any thought,
indeed is incapable of any sight or sensation,
or of any speech.
Consequently love cannot do anything
apart from wisdom,
or the will anything apart from the intellect.
By the same token,
wisdom apart from love,
or the intellect apart from the will,
is incapable of any thought,
is incapable of any sight or sensation,
or indeed of any speech.
Consequently wisdom cannot do anything
apart from love,
or the intellect anything apart from the will.
For if love is eliminated from these processes,
there is no longer any willing,
thus no longer any action.

This being so in the case of a person
whenever he does something,
still more was it so in the case of God -
who is love itself and wisdom itself -
when He created and fashioned the universe
and everything in it.

 

DLW 427 - The Conjunction of Charity With Faith, and the Will With the Intellect

DLW 427

These loves are differentiated by the fact that
celestial love is a love of good,
while spiritual love is a love of truth;
for people who are motivated by celestial love
perform useful services from a love of good,
whereas those who are motivated by spiritual love
perform useful services from a love of truth.
Celestial love's marriage is with wisdom,
while spiritual love's marriage is with intelligence;
for it is the mark of wisdom
to do good in accord with good,
and the mark of intelligence
to do good in accord with truth.
Consequently celestial love does what is good,
and spiritual love does what is true.

 

DLW 426 - Spiritual and Celestial Love and Useful Services

DLW 426

These loves are spiritual and celestial for the reason
that to love useful services
and to perform them from a love of them
is divorced from
a person's love of his own self-interest.
For one who loves useful services spiritually
regards not himself
but others apart from himself,
being affected by a concern for their welfare.

Opposed to these loves
are loves of self and the world,
for loves of self and the world
have regard for useful services
not for the sake of others
but for the sake of self;
and people who do this invert Divine order,
putting themselves in place of the Lord,
and the world in place of heaven.
Consequently they look away
from the Lord and heaven,
and to look away from them
is to look in the direction of hell.

Still, a person is not as sensible and cognizant
of a love of performing useful services
for the sake of those useful services
as he is of a love of performing useful services
for the sake of himself.
Therefore he also does not know,
when performing useful services,
whether he is doing them
for the sake of the useful services
or for the sake of self.
Let him know, however,
that he performs useful services
for the sake of the useful services
to the extent that he refrains from evils.
For to the extent that he refrains from these,
to the same extent he performs useful services,
not from himself,
but from the Lord.
Evil and good, indeed, are opposites,
and consequently to the extent
that someone is not engaged in evil,
to the same extent he is engaged in good.
No one can be engaged in evil and in good
at the same time,
because no one
can simultaneously serve two masters.

We have said this much to make it known
that even though a person
does not sensibly perceive whether
the useful services he performs
are for the sake of the useful services
or whether they are for the sake of himself,
or in other words,
whether the useful services are spiritual
or whether they are merely natural,
still he can know it
from considering whether he thinks
evils are sins or not.
If he thinks they are sins,
and on that account does not do them,
then the useful services he performs are spiritual.
And when the same person refrains from sins
from an aversion to them,
he also begins to perceive sensibly in himself then
a love of useful services
for the sake of the useful services,
and this because of the spiritual delight
he finds in them.

 

DLW 425 - Freedom and Rationality

DLW 425 [2-3]

. . . the exercise of freedom to do evils
is slavery,
and the exercise of rationality to think falsities
is irrational.

Still, it should rightly be known
that these two faculties of freedom and rationality
are not a person's own,
but are the Lord's in a person;
that they cannot be assigned to a person as his own,
nor given to a person as his own,
but are continually the Lord's in him;
and yet that a person never has them taken away.
The reason they are not taken away
is that a person cannot be saved without them,
for without them he cannot be regenerated . . ..
It is because of this
that the church teaches a person
that he cannot think truth of himself,
nor do good of himself.

Yet because a person has no other perception
than that he thinks truth of himself
and does good of himself,
it is clearly apparent that he ought to believe
that he thinks truth as though of himself
and does good as though of himself.
For if he does not believe this,
then either he is not thinking truth
and not doing good,
and so is without religion,
or he is thinking truth and doing good on his own,
in which case he attributes to himself
that which is Divine.

 

DLW 422, 423 - As Though a Garden of Eden

DLW 422 [1, 2]

A person is born natural,
but as his intellect is elevated
into the light of heaven,
and his love is elevated together with it
into the warmth of heaven,
he becomes spiritual and celestial.
He then becomes as though a garden of Eden,
in the enjoyment of a springlike light
and at the same time a springlike warmth.

The intellect does not become spiritual and celestial,
but the love does,
and when the love does,
it makes the intellect, its partner,
spiritual and celestial also.

Love becomes spiritual and celestial
by a life in accordance with the truths of wisdom
that the intellect teaches and shows it.
Love learns these through its intellect,
and not on its own.
The fact is that love cannot elevate itself
unless it knows truths,
and it can know these only through an intellect
that has been elevated and enlightened.
In the measure that it then comes to love truths
by putting them into practice,
in the same measure the love, too, is elevated.
For it is one thing to understand
and another to will,
or one thing to speak
and another to do.

. . . to the extent
that a person lives in accordance with wisdom,
to the same extent he loves it;
and he lives in accordance with wisdom
to the extent that he purifies himself of pollutions,
which are sins.
To the extent, then, that he does this,
to the same extent he loves wisdom.

DLW 423

. . . everyone has a respiration there (in heaven)
that accords with his marriage of love and wisdom.
Consequently,
as angels are known by that marriage,
so they are known also by their respiration.

It is because of this
that when anyone comes into heaven
who does not possess that marriage,
he suffers chest pain and struggles for breath
like people in the agony of death.
Therefore people in such a case
also cast themselves down headlong from there,
and do not rest until they are with people
who possess a similar respiration,
for these then possess by correspondence
a like affection and consequent thought.

 

DLW 421 - As Long As Love Is Not Elevated

DLW 421

. . . since if love is not elevated,
it remains impure . . ..
And as long as it remains impure,
it loves things that are impure,
such as the practices of vengeance, hatred,
deceit, blasphemy, and adultery.
For these are then its affections,
which we call lusts,
and it rejects things having to do with charity,
justice, honesty, truthfulness, and chastity.

As for the statement that love
is defiled in and by the intellect,
it is defiled in the intellect
when love is affected by those impure practices,
and it is defiled by the intellect
when love causes matters of wisdom
to become its servants,
and still more when it perverts,
falsifies and adulterates them.

 

DLW 419 - Love or the Will Is Purified in the Intellect If They Are Elevated Together

DLW 419 [1-2]

A person from birth
loves only himself and the world,
for nothing else appears before his eyes,
and therefore
he considers nothing else in his heart;
and this love is carnally natural,
and can be called materialistic.
Moreover, this love has also become impure
owing to the separation
of heavenly love from it in parents.

This love cannot be separated from its impurity
unless the person has the ability to elevate
his intellect into the light of heaven
and to see how he should live
in order that his love may be elevated together
with his intellect into wisdom.
Through the intellect love,
which is to say, the person,
sees what evils there are
that defile and pollute the love,
and sees, too, that if he refrains from those evils
and turns away from them as sins,
he loves such things
as are opposed to those evils,
all of which are heavenly.
He also sees as well the means
which enable him to refrain from those evils
and turn away from them as sins.
Love, which is to say, the person,
sees this through use of his ability
to elevate his intellect into the light of heaven
and gain from it wisdom.
Then in the measure
that love puts heaven in first place
and the world second,
and in the measure that it at the same time
puts the Lord in first place and self second,
in the same measure
the love is purged of its pollutions and purified.
That is to say,
in the same measure it is elevated
into the warmth of heaven
and united with the light of heaven
in which the intellect is.
A marriage is then formed,
the marriage we call the marriage
of goodness and truth, or of love and wisdom.

 

DLW 416, 418 - Natural Love, Spiritual Love, Thought and Actions

DLW 416

A person who is prompted by a natural love
and at the same time a spiritual love
is a rational person.
However, one who is prompted by
a natural love only,
although he is able to think rationally
just as well as a spiritual person,
still is not a rational person.

. . . So for example,
when the intellect from being elevated
is in a state of wisdom,
love then sees what justice is,
what honesty is, 
what chastity is,
indeed what genuine love is.
A natural love is capable of seeing this
as a result of its ability
to understand and view matters
in the light of heaven.
Indeed, it can speak, preach and describe them
as moral and at the same time spiritual virtues.
However, when the intellect
is not in an elevated state, then,
if the love is merely natural,
it does not see those virtues,
but sees, instead of justice, injustice;
instead of honesty, deceit and deception;
instead of chastity, lasciviousness; and so on.
If it then thinks about the matters it spoke of
when its intellect was in an elevated state,
it may laugh at them
and think of them only as means
that serve it for captivating minds.

DLW 418

The common opinion
is that wisdom makes the person.
Consequently when people hear
someone speaking or teaching wisely,
they believe that it reflects his character.
Indeed, that is how
the person thinks of himself at the time,
because when he speaks and teaches
in the presence of others,
he thinks on the basis of his memory,
and if he is merely natural,
in accord with the outer layer of his love,
which is an affection for
honor, glory and material gain.
However, when the same person is alone,
he thinks in accord with
the interior love of his spirit,
and he thinks then not wisely
but sometimes insanely.

It can be seen from this
that no one should be judged
by the wisdom of his speech,
but by his life, that is,
not by the wisdom of his speech
apart from his life,
but by the wisdom of his speech
in conjunction with his life.
By life we mean love.
Love is a person's life . . ..

 

DLW 414 - Love Can Only Be Elevated With Wisdom

DLW 414

. . . the will can be equally elevated,
if it loves such matters
as are matters of the light of heaven,
or matters of wisdom.
However, love or the will cannot be elevated
by any measure of honor, glory
or material gain as its end,
but by a love of useful service,
not so much for its own sake,
but for the sake of the neighbor.
And because this love is bestowed
only from heaven by the Lord,
and is bestowed by the Lord
when a person refrains from evils as being sins,
therefore it is by these means
that love or the will can be elevated also,
and apart from these means it cannot be.

The will's love, however,
is elevated into the warmth of heaven,
whereas the intellect
is elevated into the light of heaven,
and if both are elevated,
a marriage of the two takes place there,
which we call the heavenly marriage,
because it is a marriage of heavenly love and wisdom.
That is why we say that love is elevated also
if it loves its partner wisdom in the same degree.

Love for the neighbor from the Lord
is the love proper to wisdom,
or the genuine love proper to the human intellect.

 

DLW 413 - Rationality: The Ability to Understand Matters Interiorly

DLW 413

(13) By a power imparted to it by love or the will,
wisdom or the intellect can be elevated
so as to admit from heaven such matters
as are matters of light and perceive them.
. . . a person can perceive the secrets of wisdom
when he hears them.
This faculty of the human being
is the faculty called rationality,
which everyone has from creation.
It is the ability to understand matters interiorly
and to draw conclusions
regarding what is just and equitable
and what is good and true,
and it is this faculty that distinguishes
the human being from animals.
This, therefore, is what we mean by the statement
that the intellect can be elevated
and admit from heaven such matters
as are matters of light and perceive them.

 

DLW 410 - The Life Belonging to Love, to Good

DLW 410 [2-6]

Now because the first and most immediate
affections of love
are an affection for knowing,
an affection for understanding,
and an affection for seeing
that which it knows and understands,
it follows that love
forms for them the intellect,
and that it enters into these affections actually
when it begins to feel sensation and to act,
and when it begins to think.

That the intellect contributes nothing to this effort
follows from the parallel with the heart and lungs . . ..

It can be seen from this that love or the will
joins itself to wisdom or the intellect,
and not wisdom or the intellect to love or the will.
And it follows from this as well
that the knowledge which love acquires for itself
from an affection for knowing,
and the perception of truth which it acquires
from an affection for understanding,
and the thought that it acquires
from an affection for seeing
that which it knows and understands,
are not properties of the intellect,
but are the properties of love.

Thoughts, perceptions, and consequently knowledge
do indeed flow in from the spiritual world.
But still they are received
not by the intellect,
but by love
in accordance with its affections in the intellect.
It appears as though the intellect receives them,
and not love or the will,
but that is a fallacious appearance.

It also appears
as though the intellect joins itself to love or the will,
but that, too, is a fallacious appearance.
Love or the will joins itself to the intellect
and causes the intellect to be joined to it in return.
That the intellect is joined to it in return
is owing to the marriage of love with it.
Because of that marriage
a seemingly reciprocal conjunction is formed
by the life and consequent power of love.

The like is the case
with the marriage of good and truth,
for goodness is a property of love,
and truth a matter of the intellect.
Goodness initiates everything,
and it receives truth into its home
and unites itself with it
in the measure that it accords.
Goodness can also admit truths that do not accord,
but it does so because of its affection
for knowing, understanding and thinking,
when it has not yet
determined itself to useful applications
which are its ends and which it calls its goods.

A reciprocal conjunction,
or one of truth with good,
does not occur at all.
That truth is joined to good in return
is owing to the life belonging to good.

It is because of this
that every person, and every spirit and angel,
is regarded by the Lord
in accordance with his love or goodness,
and no one
in accordance with his intellect or truth
apart from his love or goodness.
For a person's life is his love . . .
and his life is what it is
according as he has elevated his affections by truths,
that is, according as he has perfected his affections
in accord with wisdom.
For love's affections
are elevated and perfected by truths, thus by wisdom;
and love then acts in conjunction with wisdom,
as though prompted by it,
but doing so of itself through wisdom,
as through a form its own,
which takes nothing whatever
of its quality from the intellect,
but everything from some determination of love,
called affection.

 

DLW 409 -Love and Intellect Acting Together

DLW 409   

. . .what is it to act from love apart from the intellect?
It can only be called irrational,
for it is the intellect that teaches
what ought to be done
and how it ought to be done.
Love without the intellect does not know this.
Therefore such a marriage exists
between love and the intellect
that although they are two distinct entities,
they nevertheless operate as one.

A like marriage exists between good and truth,
for goodness is a property of love,
and truth a matter of the intellect.

Such a marriage exists
in every single constituent of the universe
that has been created by the Lord.
Their usefulness has relation to good,
and the form of their usefulness to truth.

It is owing to this marriage
that every single constituent of the body
has a right and left side,
the right side having relation to good
from which springs truth,
and the left side to truth springing from good,
thus [the two together] to their conjunction.

 

DLW 408 - The Home of Love or the Will

DLW 408

(10) Love or the will
introduces wisdom or the intellect
into all the constituents of its home.
By the home of love or the will
we mean the whole person
in respect to all the constituents of his mind;
and because these correspond
to all the constituents of the body . . .
by the home we mean the whole person
also in respect to all the constituents of his body,
called members, organs and viscera.
The fact that the lungs are introduced
into all the latter constituents
in the same way that the intellect
is into all the constituents of the mind . . .
as for instance, that love or the will
prepares a home or bridal chamber
for its future spouse,
which is wisdom or the intellect,
and that love or the will
prepares all else in its human form -
or in its home -
in order to be able to operate conjointly
with wisdom or the intellect.

DLW 405, 406, 407 - The Affection of Knowing and Doing in the Light

DLW 405 [4]

Since love or the will corresponds to the heart,
and wisdom or the intellect to the lungs,
it follows that the heart's blood vessels in the lungs
correspond to affections for truth,
and that the ramifications
of the lungs' bronchial tubes
correspond to perceptions and thoughts
springing from those affections.

The fact that the first or initial form of this last love
was an affection for knowing
can be seen from considering
that an affection for truth
is an elevated affection for knowing.
For to be affected by truths
is to have in consequence of the affection
a wish to know them,
and when one discovers them,
to be moved by the delight of the affection
to take them in.

DLW 406 [1, 2]

. . . the light of the intellect
is the light by which love sees.

For an action
springing from love apart from the intellect
is like the action of a person
done in the darkness of night,
the person then not knowing what he is doing.
The action would consequently have in it
no element of intelligence or wisdom,
and such an action cannot be called a living act.
An action also takes its being from love
and its character from intelligence.

Good, furthermore, has all its power through truth.
Consequently good acts in truth
and so by means of it;
and good is a matter of love,
while truth is a matter of the intellect.

DLW 407

. . . because there is such a correspondence
between the will and the heart,
and between the intellect and the lungs,
that the way love interacts
with the intellect spiritually
is the way the heart interacts
with the lungs naturally.

 

DLW 404 -Affection for Truth, Perception of Truth, Thought

DLW 404 [4]

. . . these three elements -
an affection for truth,
a perception of truth,
and thought -
follow in succession from love,
and that they take form nowhere else
than in the intellect.
For when love enters the intellect,
which happens
when a conjunction of the two has taken place,
it then produces first an affection for truth,
then an affection for understanding what it knows,
and finally an affection for seeing
what in the thought of the body it understands -
thought being nothing other than an internal sight.

Thought, indeed, occurs first,
because it is a faculty of the natural mind.
But thought from a perception of truth
springing from an affection for truth occurs last.
This latter thought is the thought of wisdom,
while the first is a thought from memory
formed in consequence
of the sight of the natural mind.

All operations of love or the will
apart from the intellect have to do
not with affections for truth
but with affections for good.

 

DLW 400 - The Human Form

DLW 400

(2) Love or the will
continually strives toward the human form
and toward all the elements
that make up the human form.

. . . Its endeavor and effort is toward the human form
for the reason that God is human,
and Divine love and wisdom constitute His life,
from which comes everything connected with life.

DLW 399 - What Is the Core of Life?

DLW 399

(1) Love or the will is a person's very life.
This follows from the correspondence
of the heart with the will . . .
for as the heart functions in the body,
so the will does in the mind.
Moreover, as all the constituents of the body
depend for their existence and motion on the heart,
so all the constituents of the mind
depend for their existence and life on the will.
We say on the will, but we mean on love,
because the will is the recipient vessel of love,
and love is life itself,
and love which is life itself
comes from the Lord alone.

It can be known from the heart
and its extension throughout the body
by means of the arteries and veins
that love or the will is a person's life,
because things that correspond to each other
function similarly,
with the difference
that one is natural and the other spiritual.

 

DLW 394, 398 - The Soul

DLW 394 [2]

. . . the human soul which lives after death
is a person's spirit;
that this spirit is in complete form human;
that its soul is the will and intellect,
and that the soul of these
is love and wisdom from the Lord;
that these two are what constitute a person's life,
which comes from the Lord alone;
and that for Him to be received by the person,
the Lord causes the life to appear
as though it were the person's.
Nevertheless, to keep people
from attributing life to themselves as theirs
and so turning away from a reception of Him,
the Lord also taught
that every element of love that is called good,
and every element of wisdom that is called truth,
comes from Him,
and nothing of them from any person,
and that because these two are life,
every element of life that is life comes from Him.

DLW 398

. . . love and wisdom,
and consequently the will and intellect,
are what are termed the soul . . .
can be known from the correspondence
of the heart with the will,
and of the lungs with the intellect . . ..

 

DLW 390, 391-392 - The Will & Heart and the Intellect & Lungs; (7) Conjunction and Correspondence in Life and Death

DLW 390

(7) The conjunction of a person's spirit with the body
is due to the correspondence
of his will and intellect with his heart and lungs,
and their disjunction
to the absence of that correspondence.

Since a person's spirit possesses
a pulse and respiration just as the body does,
it follows therefore
that there is a like correspondence
of the pulse and respiration of a person's spirit
with the pulse and respiration of his body,
for the mind, as we said, is his spirit.
Consequently, when the correspondence
of these two motions ceases,
a separation takes place, which is death.

In short, the life of a person's body depends on
the correspondence of its pulse and respiration
with the pulse and respiration of his spirit,
and when that correspondence ceases,
the life of the body ceases,
and his spirit departs
and continues its life in the spiritual world,
a life which is so like his life in the natural world
that he does not know he has died.

DLW 391-392

It is apparent from this also
that the conjunction of the spirit and body in a person
is due to the correspondence
of their two cardiac motions and pulmonary motions.

The reason these two motions,
the cardiac and the pulmonary,
occur and continue is that the entire angelic heaven,
both in general and in particular,
possesses these two motions of life.
The entire angelic heaven possesses them
because the Lord infuses them from the sun
where He is and which emanates from Him.
For that sun engenders these two motions
from the Lord.
Moreover, because all the constituents
of heaven and the world
descend in succession from the Lord
through that sun in such a nexus and form,
like the links of a chain
from the first to the lasts of them,
and because the life of love and wisdom
originates from Him,
and all the forces of the universe spring from life,
it is apparent that the origin of these motions
lies nowhere else.

It follows that the varying of these motions
occurs in accordance with
the reception of love and wisdom.

 

DLW 386, 388 - The Will & Heart and the Intellect & Lungs (6) Mind, Body, Spirit

DLW 386

(6) A person's mind is his spirit,
and the spirit is the person,
the body being the outward instrument
by which the mind or spirit senses and acts
in the physical world.

DLW 388

. . . it can also be seen
that a person's mind is the person himself.
For the first framework of the human form,
or the human form itself,
with each and every one of its constituents,
comes from its first elements
continued from the brain through the nerves . . ..

This is the form
into which a person comes after death,
who is then called a spirit or angel,
and who is in every measure of perfection
a human being, only a spiritual one.
The material form
which is added and superimposed in the world
is not the human form per se,
but is its product,
being added and superimposed to enable
the person to perform useful services
in the natural world,
and also to take with him
from the purer substances of the world
some fixed containing vessel
for his spiritual constituents
and so continue and perpetuate his life.

. . . a person's mind possesses,
not only in general but also in every particular,
a constant effort toward the human form,
because God is human.