Week 5    Day 2

    Listen:

The Origin of Evil, Part Two

(continued from Day One)

CL 444:5. But the two angels then asked, “How could man turn himself away from God and turn to himself, when yet man can will, think, and therefore do nothing except from God? Why did God permit this?”

I replied, “Man was so created that all that he wills, thinks, and does appears to him just as if in himself and thus of himself. Without this appearance man would not be man, for he could not receive, retain, and as it were appropriate to himself anything of good and truth, or of love and wisdom. From this it follows that without this as-it-were living appearance, man would have no conjunction with God, and therefore no eternal life. But if from this appearance he induces on himself the belief that he does will, think, and therefore do good of himself, and not from the Lord, although it is in all appearance as if of himself, he then turns good into evil within him, and thus makes in himself the origin of evil. This was the sin of Adam.

[6] “But I will open this subject somewhat more clearly. The Lord looks at everyone in the forehead, and this look passes through into the back of his head. Behind the forehead is the cerebrum and in the back is the cerebellum. The cerebellum is dedicated to love and its goods and the cerebrum to wisdom and its truths. Therefore, he who looks with the face to the Lord receives wisdom from Him, and through wisdom love; but he who looks backwards away from the Lord receives love and not wisdom, and love without wisdom is love from man and not from the Lord. And this love, because it conjoins itself with falsities, does not acknowledge God, but itself as a god; and this it tacitly confirms by the faculty of understanding and of becoming wise, as if of himself, which is implanted in him from creation. This love therefore is the origin of evil.

“That this is so can be shown to the eye. I will call here some evil spirit, who turns himself away from God, and will speak to him from behind, or into the back part of his head. And you will see that the things said will be turned into their opposites.”

[7] And I called such a spirit. He was present, and I spoke to him from behind, saying, “Do you know anything about hell, about damnation, and about the torment there?” And presently when he had turned towards me I asked, “What did you hear?”

He answered, “I heard this: ‘Do you know anything about heaven, about salvation, and the happiness there?”

And afterwards when I repeated his answer to him from behind, he said that he what I had said at first.

Then it was said to him from behind his back, “Do you know that those who are in hell are insane from falsities?” And being asked by me about what he heard, he said, “I heard, ‘Do you know that those who are in heaven are wise from truths?’” And when these words were spoken from behind his back he said that he heard, “Do you know that those who are in hell are insane from falsities?” And so on.

From this it was very manifest that when the mind turns itself away from the Lord, it turns to itself, and then perceives things in a contrary way.

“This is the reason why in this spiritual world, as you know, one may not stand behind another and speak to him. For in this way a love is inspired into him which his own intelligence favors and obeys on account of its delight, but which, because it is from man and not from God, is a love of evil or a love of falsity.

[8] “Besides this I will tell you of another similar thing, namely, that several times I have heard goods and truths let down from heaven into hell, and in the descent, they were gradually turned into their opposites, the good into evil, and the truth into falsity. The cause of this fact is undoubtedly the same, that all who are in hell turn themselves away from the Lord.”

Having heard these things the two angels thanked me, and said, “As you are now meditating and writing upon a love which is opposite to our conjugial love, and the opposite to that love saddens our minds, we will take our leave.”

And when they said, “Peace be to you,” I begged them not to tell anything about this love to their brothers and sisters in heaven, because it would hurt their innocence.

I can affirm for a certainty that those who die in infancy grow up in heaven, and when they attain the stature of young men in the world at eighteen, and girls at fifteen years, they remain at that age; and that then marriages are provided for them by the Lord. Also that both before marriage and after it, they are entirely ignorant of what scortation is, or that it is possible.

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