Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 4224

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4224. Organic forms are not only those apparent to the eye, and that can be detected by microscopes; for there are also organic forms still more pure, which can never be discovered by any eye, whether naked or assisted. The latter forms are interior forms such as are those of the internal sight, and which in the last analysis are of the understanding. These are inscrutable, but still they are forms, that is, substances; for no sight, not even intellectual sight, is possible except from something. This is also known in the learned world; that is to say, that without a substance, which is the subject, there is not any mode, nor any modification, nor any quality which manifests itself in an active manner. These purer or interior forms which are inscrutable, are those which form and set forth the internal senses, and also produce the interior affections. It is to these forms that the interior things of heaven correspond, because they correspond to the senses which they set forth, and to the affections of these senses. But as very many things have been disclosed to me respecting these matters and their correspondence, they cannot be clearly presented unless each one is treated of specifically; and therefore of the Lord's Divine mercy I may continue below the consideration of the subject of the correspondence of man with the Grand Man that was commenced in a preceding volume, to the intent that man may at last know, not from any ratiocination, and still less from any hypothesis, but from experience itself, how the case is with him, and with his internal man which is called his soul, and in consequence with his conjunction with heaven, and through heaven with the Lord; and consequently whence man is man, and by what he is distinguished from beasts; and furthermore, how man himself separates himself from this conjunction, and conjoins himself with hell.


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