What is the human form? (5 mins)

True Christian Religion (Ager) 20{2}. This One God is Substance itself and Form itself and angels and men are substances and forms from Him, and so far as they are in Him and He in them are images and likenesses of Him. As God is Esse He is also Substance; for unless Esse is substance it is a figment of the reason; for substance has subsistent being. Moreover, one who is a substance is also a form; for unless a substance is a form it is a figment of the reason. Wherefore both substance and form may be predicated of God, but in the sense that He is the only, the very, and the primal Substance and Form… this Form is the verily Human Form, that is, God is verily Man, infinite in every respect … angels and men are substances and forms created and organised for receiving what is Divine flowing into them through heaven. For this reason they are called in the Book of Creation “images and likenesses of God” (Genesis 1:26, 27); and elsewhere “His sons,” and “born of Him.” … so far as man lives under Divine direction, that is, suffers himself to be led by God, so far he becomes an image of God more and more interiorly. Unless an idea is formed of God as the primal Substance and Form, and of His Form as the verily Human Form, the human mind may easily involve itself in spectral fancies about God Himself, the origin of man, and the creation of the world. It would then have no other conception of God than as the nature of the universe in its first principles, that is, as its expanse, or else as emptiness or nothingness; nor any other conception of man’s origin than as a flowing together of elements into that form by mere chance; nor of the creation of the world than that its substances and forms originated in points, and afterwards in geometrical lines, which are essentially nothing, because nothing can be predicated of them.  Heaven and Hell 60. People who do not have an appropriate concept of spiritual and heavenly realities cannot grasp the fact that heavenly and spiritual realities are arranged and connected in this form and image. They think that the earthly and material elements that make up their outmost form really make them what they are, and that without them they would not be human. Let them know, though, that they are not human beings because of these elements but because they are able to understand what is true and will what is good. These are the spiritual and heavenly realities that make them human. Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) 9503. So it is that the Lord is heaven, for Divine Truth which emanates from Him and is received by the angels makes heaven. Consequently the more perfect the manner in which angels receive Divine Truth that comes from the Lord and accordingly receive the Lord, the more perfect the human forms they possess. Eventually they become so perfect that their beauty surpasses belief; anyone who sees them, as I have done, will be dumbfounded. For in their outward form angels are manifestations of heavenly love and charity, and that is the truly human form. The reason why angels possess human forms is that the Divine in heaven is the Lord, and those who receive Divine Truth within good from Him are images of Him.   Arcana Coelestia (Potts) 8988 . The angels themselves appear in a human form in the heavens absolutely according to the truths which pertain to them in good, with a beauty and brightness according to the quality of the good from truths. Use is how it manifests Conjugial Love (Gladish) 16. Into our souls three things flow as one from the Lord, and these three as one, or this ‘trine,’ are love, wisdom, and use. But love and wisdom do not emerge except as an idea, because they only reside in affection and thoughts of the mind, but in use they become real, because then they are in the action and work of your body. And where they become real they also become substantial. And because love and wisdom emerge and become substantial in doing things, it is use that excites us, and use is doing the work of your calling faithfully, sincerely, and industriously. “A love of use, and the devotion it brings to usefulness, keep the mind from branching out and wandering around soaking up all the desires that seep in enticingly from your body and the world through the senses, and that scatter to all the winds true religion and true morality, and the benefits of them. But a devotion to use wraps up religion and morality, binds them together, and puts the mind in a state to receive wisdom and its truth. And then it puts aside the illusions and mockeries of both falsities and aimlessness. True Christian Religion 67.  Previous to creation God was love itself and wisdom itself and the union of these two in the effort to accomplish uses; for love and wisdom apart from use are only fleeting matters of reason, which fly away if not applied to use. The first two separated from the third are like birds flying above a great ocean, which are at length exhausted by flying, and fall down and are drowned. Evidently, therefore, the universe was created by God to give existence to uses; and for this reason the universe may be called a theater of uses. And as man is the chief end of creation, it follows that each and all things were created for the sake of man; and therefore each and all things belonging to order were brought together and concentrated in him, to the end that through him God might accomplish primary uses. Love and wisdom apart from their third, which is use, may be likened to the sun’s heat and light; which, if they did not operate upon men, animals, and vegetables, would be worthless things; but by influx into and operation upon these they become real.  For there are three things that follow each other in order, namely, end, cause, and effect; and it is known in the learned world that the end is nothing unless it regards the effecting cause, and that the end and this cause are nothing unless an effect is produced. The end and cause may indeed be contemplated abstractly in the mind, but still only on account of some effect which the end purposes and the cause secures.  It is the same with love, wisdom, and use; use is the end which love purposes, and through the cause accomplishes; and when use is accomplished love and wisdom have a real existence; and in the use they make for themselves a habitation and foundation where they rest as in their home.  It is the same with the man who has in him the love and wisdom of God when he is performing uses; and to enable him to perform Divine uses he was created an image and likeness of God, that is, a form of Divine order. We are not human Conjugial Love (Chadwick) 315{10,11}. Is there anyone who does not believe the soul to be the most intimate and subtle essence of a person? But what is essence without form but a figment of the imagination? The soul then is a form, but what sort of form, I will tell you. It is the form of all the parts of love and all the parts of wisdom. All the parts of love are called affections, and all the parts of wisdom are called perceptions. The perceptions as a result of and so together with the affections make up a single form containing countless parts, but arranged in such order and so coherent that they can be called a unity; and they can be called a unity, because nothing can be taken away from it or be added to it, if it is to remain a unity. What is the human soul but such a form? All the parts of love and all the parts of wisdom are the essentials of such a form, and in the case of a person these essentials are in his soul, and from his soul in his head and body. ‘You are called spirits and angels; and you believed in the world that spirits and angels were like puffs of wind or particles of ether, and so were minds and characters. Now you see clearly that you are truly, really and actually people, who in the world lived and thought in a material body; and you knew that it is not the material body that lives and thinks, but the spiritual substance in that body. This you called the soul, whose form you did not know; yet now you have seen it and go on seeing it. You are all souls, about whose immortality you have heard, thought, talked and written so much; and since you are forms of love and wisdom coming from God, you cannot ever die. The soul then is a human form, from which nothing can be taken away, and to which nothing can be added, and it is the inmost of all the forms throughout the body. Since the forms which are outside receive from the inmost both essence and form, you are therefore souls, just as you appear to be to your sight and to ours. In short, the soul is the real person because it is the inmost person; its form therefore is the human form in full perfection. But it is not life, but it is the nearest receiver of life from God, and so God’s dwelling.’  Fractal idea of the repeating pattern of the human form Heaven and Hell (Dole) 73 . Therefore Every Angel Is in Perfect Human Form…as a whole reflects a single individual and that the same holds true for each community in heaven. From the chain of causes presented there, it follows that each single angel reflects the same as well. As heaven is a person in greatest form and a community of heaven is a person in lesser form, so an angel is a person in least form; for in the most perfect form, like the form of heaven, there is a likeness of the whole in the part and of the part in the whole.  Conjugial Love (Searle) 92. V. FROM THE INFLUX OF THE MARRIAGE OF GOOD AND TRUTH That good and truth are the universals of creation, and thus are in all created subjects ; and that they are in created subjects according to the form of each; and that good and truth proceed from the Lord not as two but as one, was shewn above, nos. 84 to 87. From these considerations it follows, that the UNIVERSAL CONJUGIAL SPHERE proceeds from the Lord, and pervades the universe from its primes to its ultimates, thus from angels even to worms. The reason why such a sphere of the marriage of good and truth proceeds from the Lord, is, that it is also the sphere of propagation, that is, of prolification and fructification ; and this sphere is the same with the Divine providence for the preservation of the universe by means of successive generations. Now, since this universal sphere, which is that of the marriage of good and truth, flows in into subjects according to the form of each (see no. 86), it follows that the male receives it according to his form, thus in the intellect, because he is an intellectual form ; and that the female receives it according to her form, thus in the will, because she is a voluntary form from the intellectual of the man; and since that sphere is also the sphere of prolification, it follows that the love of the sex is thence. Conjugial Love (Chadwick) 132. For a person cannot help feeling that he loves and is wise of himself, that is, he wills good and understands truth of himself, when in fact it is not in the least from himself, but from God. It is only God who loves of Himself and is wise of Himself, because God is love itself and wisdom itself. The likeness or appearance that love and wisdom, or good and truth, are present in a person as if they belonged to him is what makes him human, and capable of being linked to God and so living forever.  Spiritual Experiences (Buss) 1710. But now [it is to be affirmed] that the life of the Lord flows in into all in the universe, for they constitute the Grand Body [corpus maximum] and heaven, with the heaven of spirits, which is His body, because it lives from Him, as a man lives from his soul; i.e. from the Lord through the soul, wherefore all the members, and the parts of the members, cannot but live from Him; just as in man the members and parts of members depend exclusively upon his soul; and according to the forms of the members and the forms of the parts, so they live, and so do they perform their functions, however diverse, in the universal body; and yet in such a way that they are led to uses and ends, like each single organ in the body, for there is a consent of all to uses and to one end, which is the Lord; whence life [flows] into all and each, from one mediately into another, through a society of forms. The Lord = the Word = the Divine Human Apocalypse Explained (Whitehead) 151… the Word is the Lord in respect to the Divine Human and Divine truth proceeding therefrom. True Christian Religion 263. Few understand how the Lord is the Word; for they think that although the Lord can enlighten and teach men through the Word, He cannot on this account be called the Word. But let it be understood that every man is his own will and his own understanding, each man being thus distinct from every other; and as the will is the receptacle of love, and thus of all the goods of that love, and the understanding is the receptacle of wisdom, and thus of all things of truth belonging to that wisdom, it follows, that each man is his own love and his own wisdom, or what is the same thing, his own good and his own truth. For no other reason is man a man, and nothing else than this in man is man. In respect to the Lord, He is love itself and wisdom itself, thus good itself and truth itself; and this He became by fulfilling all the good and all the truth in the Word. For he who thinks and speaks nothing but truth becomes that truth; and he who wills and does only what is good becomes that good; and as the Lord fulfilled all the Divine truth and Divine good contained in the Word, both in its natural sense and in its spiritual sense, He became good itself and truth itself, that is, the Word. Arcana Coelestia 2859 . That the Lord is the Word is known, and therefore the Lord is doctrine (n. 2531), for all doctrine is from the Word.  The all of doctrine in the Word is from the Lord, and is concerning the Lord.  In the internal sense of the Word nothing but the Lord and His kingdom is treated of, as has been shown many times.  It is the Lord’s Divine Human of which the internal sense of the Word especially treats; and the all of doctrine in the Word as regards man is to worship Him and love Him. Arcana Coelestia (Potts) 5321. [2] From the Divine Itself nothing of doctrine can possibly proceed except through the Divine Human, that is, through the  Word, which in the supreme sense is the Divine truth from the Lord’s Divine Human. Not even the angels in the inmost  heaven can apprehend that which proceeds immediately from the Divine Itself, because it is infinite, and therefore  transcends all apprehension, even that of angels. But that which proceeds from the Lord’s Divine Human they can  apprehend, because it treats of God as a Divine Man, concerning whom some idea can be formed from the Human; and  any idea whatever formed about the Human is accepted, provided it flows from the good of innocence, and is in the good  of charity. True Christian Religion 778. Every man is his own love and his own intelligence, and whatever proceeds from him derives its essence from those two essentials or properties of his life. Therefore the angels, from a brief intercourse with a man, recognize what he is essentially; they know his love from the tone of his voice, and his intelligence from his speech. This is because there are two universals of life belonging to every man, the will and the understanding. The will is the receptacle and abode of his love, and the understanding the receptacle and abode of his intelligence.  Therefore all things whatever, whether action or speech, that proceed from man, constitute the man and are the man himself. In like manner, but in a pre-eminent degree the Lord is Divine love and Divine wisdom, or what is the same thing, Divine good and Divine truth; for His will is of the Divine love and the Divine love is of His will, while His understanding is of the Divine wisdom and the Divine wisdom is of His understanding; the Human form is their containant. From this some idea may be formed of how the Lord is the Word.  But on the contrary, he who is antagonistic to the Word, that is, to the Divine truth therein, consequently, to the Lord and His church, is his own evil and his own falsity, both in reference to his mind and in reference to the effects thereof, relating to actions and words, which proceed from the body. Arcana Coelestia 8864. I am Jehovah thy God. That this signifies the Lord as to the Divine Human universally reigning in each and all things of good and truth, is evident from the fact that in the Word no other than the Lord is meant by “Jehovah” (see n. 1343, 1736, 2921, 3023, 3035, 3448, 5663, 6280, 6281, 6303, 8274), in like manner by “Jehovah Zebaoth,” by “the Lord Jehovih,” by “Jehovah God” (n. 2921, 3023, 3448, 6303); and that the Lord is called “Jehovah” from the Divine good, which is the Divine Being, but “God” from the Divine truth, which is the Divine Coming-forth (n. 6905, also n. 709, 732, 1096, 2586, 2769, 2807, 2822, 3921, 4402). That it is the Divine Human of the Lord which is here meant by “Jehovah God,” is because the Lord as to this is meant in the Word both by “Jehovah” and by “God” — the Divine good, which He is even as to the Human, by “Jehovah;” and the Divine truth, which He is because it proceeds from Him, by “God.” [2] That the Divine Human of the Lord is meant by “Jehovah God,” is because the Divine Itself which is in the Lord cannot be seen in heaven, and not even perceived, thus cannot be received in faith and love, but the Divine Human only. That the Divine Itself cannot be communicated to the angels in heaven, and still less to men on earth, except through the Divine Human, is known in the churches from the words of the Lord in the Evangelists, where He says that He is the “door,” that He is the “mediator,” that “no one can come to the Father but through Him,” that “no one knoweth the Father but He,” and that “no one hath seen the Father,” not even any “shape” of Him. From this it is plain that it is the Lord who is here meant by “Jehovah God.” That it is He also who redeemed the human race and liberated it from hell is likewise known. This is signified by the words which follow: “who brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of servants.” From all this it is now plain that Jehovah God who spoke from Mount Sinai denotes the Lord as to the Divine Human. [3] That this is the first thing which is said by the Lord from Mount Sinai, is because this ought to reign universally in each and all things that follow; for what is said first must be kept in the memory in the things that follow, and must be regarded as the universal thing that is in them. What is meant by “universally reigning” shall be seen in what follows. The things said by the Lord are all of this nature, namely, that the things said first are to reign in the things which follow, and are to involve them, and so successively the things that follow in the series. The things which follow in this chapter are the commandments of the Decalogue, which are internal truths, and then the statutes, which are external truths. In both of these the Lord must reign as to the Divine Human, for they are from Him, and are Himself, because all truths that are truths proceed from Him, and the things which proceed from Him are Himself. That the Lord as to the Divine Human must reign in each and all things of faith, is also known in the churches, for it is there taught that without the Lord there is no salvation, and that all the truth and good of faith are from Him. Thus as He is the source of faith, He is the faith with man, and if the faith, He is also every truth that is contained in the doctrine of faith, which is from the Word. From this also it is that the Lord is called “the Word.” Third Round posts are short audio clips taken from Round 3 comments in online Logopraxis Life Group meetings. The aim is to maintain a focus on understanding the Text’s application to the inner life while reinforcing key LP principles highlighted in the exchanges.