Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/342

 stance and life in the spiritual world. The successive degrees of the spiritual world in Divine order and with their life make the heavens, as the degrees of mineral, plant, and animal life constitute nature. So it may be said that the Spiritual or Internal Mind coincides with the degrees in heaven, or with the heavens of the spiritual world. Since the Spiritual Mind is an image of heaven, there are as many heavens as there are discrete degrees, or distinct orders of truth and life in the Spiritual Mind, which are three. The Natural or External Mind coincides with the degrees and orders of life in the natural world.

Since the heavens are formed by the three degrees of the spiritual world, and are entered by the opening of corresponding degrees in the mind, the failure to open any of the degrees makes entry into the heavens impossible. The truths of the Word are provided that by a life according to them man may ascend the ladder of sensual, scientific, and rational life to spiritual life. But if no plane of the Internal Mind is opened by a religious life, the planes of the mind become, as it were, withered, and they can no more