THE CONJUNCTION OF HEAVEN WITH THE HUMAN RACE

It is well known in the Church that all good is from God, and that nothing of good is from man, consequently that no one ought to ascribe any good to himself as his own. It is also well known that evil is from the devil. Therefore those who speak from the doctrine of the Church say of those who behave well, and of those who speak and preach piously, that they are led by God; but the opposite of those who do not behave well and who speak impiously. These things cannot be so unless man has conjunction with heaven and conjunction with hell, and unless these conjunctions are with his will and his understanding, for from them the body acts and the mouth speaks. What kind of conjunction this is will now be told.

With every individual there are good spirits and evil spirits. Through the good spirits, man has conjunction with heaven, and through the evil spirits with hell. These spirits are in the world of spirits, which lies midway between heaven and hell. This world will be described particularly in the following pages. When these spirits come to a man they enter into his entire memory, and thus into his entire thought, evil spirits into the evil things of his memory and thought, and good spirits into the good things of his memory and thought. These spirits have no knowledge at all that they are with a man, but when they are with him they believe that all things of his memory and thought are their own. Neither do they see the man, because nothing that is in our solar world falls within their vision. The Lord exercises the greatest care that the spirits should not know that they are with a man; for if they knew it, they would speak with him. In that case evil spirits would destroy him. For evil spirits, being conjoined with hell, desire nothing so much as to destroy man, not alone his soul, that is, his faith and love, but also his body. It is otherwise when spirits do not speak with man, in which case they are not aware that what they are thinking and also what they are saying among themselves is from man. For they even speak among themselves from man, but believe that what they are thinking and saying is their own, and each esteems and loves what is his own. In this way, spirits are constrained to love and esteem man, although they do not know it. That such is the conjunction of spirits with man has become so well known to me as a result of many years' continual experience that there is nothing better known to me.

The reason that spirits who communicate with hell are also adjoined to man is that man is born into evils of every kind, consequently his first life can only be from them. Therefore, unless spirits of a nature like his own were adjoined to man he could not live, nor indeed could he be withdrawn from his evils and reformed. He is therefore held in his own life by means of evil spirits and withheld from it by means of good spirits, and by the two kept in equilibrium. Being in equilibrium, he is in his freedom, and can be drawn away from evils and turned towards good, and good can also be implanted in him, which would not be possible at all if he were not in freedom. Freedom is not possible to man unless spirits from hell act on one side and spirits from heaven on the other, and man is in between. Again, it has been shown that so far as a man's life is from what he inherits, and thus from self, if he were not permitted to be in evil he would have no life, and if he were not in freedom he would have no life. Also he cannot be forced to good, and what is forced does not abide; further that the good that man receives in freedom is implanted in his will and becomes, as it were, his own (ejus proprium). These are the reasons that man has communication with hell and communication with heaven.

The nature of the communication of heaven with good spirits, and of hell with evil spirits, and of the consequent conjunction with man of heaven and hell, will also be told. All the spirits who are in the world of spirits have communication with heaven or with hell, the evil spirits with hell, and the good spirits with heaven. Heaven is distinguished into societies, and so is hell. Any one spirit belongs to some society, and continues to exist by influx from it, thus acting as one with it. Consequently, as man is conjoined with spirits so is he conjoined with heaven or with hell, even with the society there in which he is in respect of his affection or his love. For the societies of heaven are all distinguished in accordance with their affections of good and truth, and the societies of hell in accordance with their affections of evil and falsity.

The spirits adjoined to man are such as he himself is, in respect to affection or love; but the good spirits are adjoined to him by the Lord, while the evil spirits are summoned by the man himself. The spirits with man, however, are changed in accordance with the changes of his affections; thus, there are some spirits with him in infancy, others in boyhood, others in youth and manhood, and others in old age. In infancy, those spirits are present who are in innocence and who thus communicate with the heaven of innocence, which is the inmost or third heaven; in childhood, those spirits are present who are in the affection of knowing, and who thus communicate with the ultimate or first heaven; in youth and manhood, spirits are present who are in the affection of what is true and good, and consequently in intelligence, and who thus communicate with the second or middle heaven; in old age, however, spirits are present who are in wisdom and innocence, and who thus communicate with the inmost or third heaven. But the Lord effects this adjunction with those who can be reformed and regenerated. It is otherwise with those who cannot be reformed or regenerated. Good spirits also are adjoined to these, that they may thereby be withheld from evil as much as possible, but their immediate conjunction is with evil spirits who communicate with hell, whereby they have such spirits with them as are like themselves. If they are lovers of self or lovers of gain, or lovers of revenge, or lovers of adultery, similar spirits are present, and dwell, as it were, in their evil affections, and man is incited by these, except so far as he can be kept from evil by good spirits, and they cling to him, and do not withdraw, so far as the evil affection prevails. Thus it is that a bad man is conjoined to hell and a good man is conjoined to heaven.

Man is governed by the Lord through spirits because he is not in the order of heaven, for he is born into evils which are of hell, thus into the complete opposite of Divine order. Consequently, he needs to be brought back into order, and this can only be done mediately by means of spirits. It would be otherwise if man were born into the good that is in accord with the order of heaven; then he would not be governed by the Lord through spirits, but by means of order itself, thus by means of general influx. By means of this influx, man is governed in respect of whatever goes forth from his thought and will into act, that is, in respect of speech and acts; for both of these flow in harmony with natural order, and therefore with these the spirits adjoined to man have nothing in common. Animals also are governed by means of this general influx from the spiritual world, because they are in the order of their life, and animals have not been able to pervert and destroy that order because they have no rational faculty. What the difference between man and beasts is may be seen above (n. 39).

As to what further concerns the conjunction of heaven with the human race, it ought to be known that the Lord Himself inflows with each man, in accordance with the order of heaven, both into his inmosts and into his ultimates, and disposes him to receive heaven, governing his ultimates from his inmosts, and at the same time his inmosts from his ultimates, thus holding each thing and all things in connection in man. This influx of the Lord is called immediate influx; while the other influx that is effected through spirits is called mediate influx. The latter is maintained by means of the former. Immediate influx, which is that of the Lord Himself, is from His Divine Human, and is into man's will and through his will into his understanding, and thus into his good and through his good into his truth, or what is the same thing, into his love and through his love into his faith, but not the reverse; still less is it into faith apart from love, or into truth apart from good or into understanding that is not from will. This Divine influx is unceasing, and in the case of the good is received in good, but not in the case of the evil. With them it is either rejected or suffocated or perverted; and in consequence they have an evil life which, in the spiritual sense, is death.

The spirits who are with man, both those conjoined with heaven and those conjoined with hell, never inflow with man from their own memory and the thought derived therefrom, for if they should inflow from their own thought, man would not know but that whatever belonged to them would be his own (see above n. 256). Nevertheless, there inflows with man through them out of heaven an affection belonging to the love of good and truth, and out of hell an affection belonging to the love of evil and falsity. Therefore as far as man's affection agrees with the affection that inflows, so far is that affection received by him in his thought, since man's interior thought is wholly in accord with his affection or love; but so far as man's affection does not agree with that affection it is not received. Therefore, as thought is not introduced with man through spirits, but only an affection for good and an affection for evil, it is evident that man has choice, because he has freedom, and is thus able with his thought to receive good and reject evil, for he knows from the Word what is good and what is evil. Whatever he receives in thought from affection also is appropriated to him; but whatever he does not receive in thought from affection is not appropriated to him. From these considerations, the nature of the influx with man of good out of heaven, and of evil out of hell, can be confirmed.

I have also been permitted to know the source of human anxiety, grief of mind (animus), and interior sadness, which is called melancholy. There are spirits not as yet in conjunction with hell, because they are in their first state; these will be described in the following pages where the world of spirits is dealt with. These spirits love things undigested and unprofitable, such as pertain to food becoming foul in the stomach. Consequently, they are present where such things are with man, because they find delight in them; and they talk there with one another from their own evil affection. The affection that is in their speech inflows from this source with man; and when this affection is the opposite of man's affection it becomes in him sadness and melancholy anxiety; but when it is in agreement it becomes in him gladness and cheerfulness. These spirits appear near to the stomach, some to the left and some to the right of it, and some beneath and some above, also nearer and more remote, thus variously in accordance with the affections in which they are. That this is the source of anxiety of mind has been shown and proved to me by much experience. I have seen these spirits, I have heard them, I have felt the anxieties arising from them, I have talked with them; when they have been driven away the anxiety ceased; when they returned the anxiety returned; and I have noted the increase and decrease of it according to their approach and removal. From this, it has been made clear to me why some who do not know what conscience is, because they have no conscience, ascribe its pain to the stomach.

The conjunction of heaven with man is not like the conjunction of man with man, but the conjunction is with the interiors of man's mind (mens), that is, with his spiritual or internal man. But there is also a conjunction with his natural or external by means of correspondences, which will be spoken of in the next section where the conjunction of heaven with man by means of the Word is to be dealt with.
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I have talked with angels about the conjunction of heaven with the human race, and I said that, while the man of the Church declares that all good is from God, and that angels are with man, yet few believe that angels are conjoined to man, still less that they are in his thought and affection. To this the angels replied that they know that there is such a belief and even such a mode of speaking in the world, and especially, to their surprise, within the Church, where yet there is the Word to teach men about heaven and its conjunction with man. Nevertheless, there is such a conjunction that man is unable to think the least thing apart from the spirits adjoined to him, and on this his spiritual life depends. They said that the cause of ignorance of this matter is man's belief that he lives from himself, without a connection with the First Being (Esse) of life; and that he does not know that this connection exists by means of the heavens; and yet if that connection were broken man would instantly fall down dead. If man believed, as is really true, that all good is from the Lord and all evil from hell, he would not make the good in him a matter of merit nor would evil be imputed to him; for he would then look to the Lord in all the good he thinks and does, and all the evil that inflows would be cast down to hell whence it comes. But because man does not believe that there is any influx into him either from heaven or from hell, and so supposes that all the things that he thinks and wills are in himself, and therefore from himself, he appropriates the evil to himself, and the inflowing good he defiles with merit.