Chapter VIII. The Mind in Three Degrees.

"The nature of man's initiament or primitive in the womb, after conception, no one can know because it cannot be seen, and it is also of spiritual substance, which is not visible by natural light. Now because some in the world are such that they direct the mind even to an investigation of man's primitive which is the seed of the father from which conception takes place, and because many of them have fallen into the error that man is in his fullness from his first which is the beginning [inchoamentuni] and is afterward perfected by growth; therefore the quality of this beginning or first, in its form, has been disclosed to me. This was done by the angels, to whom it was revealed by the LORD. They, have made this of their wisdom, and the joy of their wisdom is to communicate to others what they know; and therefore by leave granted them, they presented before my eyes in the light of heaven a type of man's initial form, which was as follows:- There appeared something like a very small image of a brain with a delicate delineation of a certain face in front without appendage : this primitive in its upper convex part was compacted of contiguous globules or spherules, and every one of these spherules was compacted of still smaller ones, and every one of these again of the smallest; it was thus of three degrees; anteriorly in the flat part something delineated appeared for the face. The convex part was covered about with a very thin membrane or meninge, which was transparent; this convex part, which was a type of a brain in its leasts, was also divided into two cushions. as it were, as the brain in its largest [forrns] is divided into two hemispheres; and I was told that the- right cushion was the receptacle of love and the left the receptacle of wisdom, and that by marvelous interweavings they were like consorts and comrades. It was farther shown in the heavenly light which beamed upon it, that the structure of this little brainlet was interiorly, as to its situation and fluxion, in the order and in the form of heaven, and that its exterior structure was, on the contrary, opposed to that order and that form. After these things had been seen and shown, the angels said that the two interior degrees 1 which were in the order and form of heaven, were the receptacles of love and wisdom from the LORD.; and that the exterior degree, which was in the opposition to these, contrary to the order and form of heaven, was the receptacle of infernal love and insanity. This is because man by hereditary taint is born into all kinds of evil, and these evils reside there in the extremities; and that taint cannot be removed unless the two superior degrees are opened, which, as before stated, are receptacles of love and wisdom from the LORD. And as love and wisdom are the real man, - for love and wisdom in their essence are the LORD, - and as this primitive of man is their receptacle it follows that in this primitive there is a continuous effort toward the human form, which it also gradually assumes."- DLW 432

In the above extract the inmost A is neither described nor mentioned, yet we know from the Writings that it is within this primitive, it being the very primitive of the primitive.

The two higher degrees B and C constitute the whole internal mind and represent that mind in its two aspects of celestial and spiritual, and in the individual are equivalent to the two kingdoms in heaven; and they produce from themselves the external or natural degree D as their ultimate and base, answering to the world of spirits.

In this passage (DLW 432) these three degrees are presented in their strictly initial form as at conception. The two interior or superior degrees are represented in the diagram by B and C and the external degree by D. In Divine Wisdom III, 4, the two higher degrees B and C are said to be in the order and form of heaven, but the mass of the lowest degree, by virtue of hereditary decline, in the order and form of hell.

In Divine Love and Wisdom we read,

"The natural mind of man consists of spiritual substances, and at the same time of natural substances; from it; spiritual substances thought is produced, but not from its natural substances."- DLW 257.

Of this natural mind, only that part which is organized of spiritual substances and called the lowest degree of the human primitive described above, is here represented by D; that part composed of natural substances which the above primitive afterward takes on from the mother, is not here separately drawn, though included in E, but it will be distinctly presented in Diagram XV.

The reader will bear in mind that the human primitive which is the paternal seed, already described from the Writings and here represented by B C D, is composed entirely of spiritual substance not visible in natural light; the material substance commonly regarded as the human seed is not the true seed, but merely its containant and preservative. (TCR 103, 92.)

NOTE. - The initial form of man in a type seen in the light of heaven, (described in DLW 432), is not man's inmost presented in Diagram III and meant in Heaven and Hell 39 and other like passages in the Writings, but is the mind derived from the inmost, - the mind with its three degrees, in a germinal state.

This agrees with the fact that the "inmost, the LORD'S veriest abode in man," (HH 39), is above the sphere of angelic consciousness, and with the fact that the heaven of human internals," which is the complex of these supreme degrees of all the individual angels, is above the angelic heaven (AC 1999), because, above angelic consciousness, above the highest degree of the mind of the angel, as distinguished from his soul. (See Inf. 8.)