Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/153

 darkness in him; and the things which are in thick darkness are either denied or not understood.

Hence it is that they who love themselves and the world above all things, because the superior faculties of their minds are closed, in heart deny divine truths; and if they say anything about them from memory, still they do not understand them: they regard them also in the same way that they regard worldly and corporeal things. Such being their character, they cannot attend to anything but what enters through the bodily senses, and are delighted with nothing else. And among these things are many which are filthy, obscene, profane and wicked; nor can they be removed, because with such persons there is no influx from heaven into their minds, since these are closed above, as was said.

A man's intention, from which his internal sight or thought is determined, is his will; for what a man wills, he intends, and what he intends, he thinks. If, therefore, his intention be toward heaven, his thought is determined thither, and with it his whole mind, which is thus in heaven; whence he afterwards surveys the things belonging to the world beneath him, like one who looks from the roof of a house.

Hence it is that the man who has the interiors of his mind open, can discern the evils and falsities appertaining to him, for these are beneath the spiritual mind. And on the other hand the man whose interiors are not open, cannot see his own evils