196 HEAVEN and HELL §353
e. The logical thinking of sense-centered people is both keen and skillful because they place all
intelligence in talking from their physical memory: 195 , 196 , 5700 , 10236. However, all this relies
on deceptive sensory appearances: 5084 , 6948 , 6949 , 7693. Sense-centered people are more canny
and vicious than others: 7693 , 10236. The ancients called people like this “serpents of the tree of
knowledge”: 195 , 196 , 197 , 6398 , 6949 , 10313.memory and inspect almost physically. This is the case even though the
very same branches of knowledge serve truly intelligent people as a means
of forming their understanding. By “branches of knowledge” we mean the
various experimental disciplines such as physics, astronomy, chemistry,
mechanics, geometry, anatomy, psychology, philosophy, and political his-
tory, as well as the realms of literature and criticism and language study.
[ 2 ] There are church dignitaries who deny the Divine. They do not
raise their thoughts any higher than the sensory concerns of the outer
person. They look on the contents of the Word as no different from
knowledge about anything else; they do not treat those contents as sub-
jects of thought or of any thorough consideration by an enlightened
rational mind. This is because their own deeper levels are closed off, and
along with them, the more outward levels that are next to these deeper
ones. The reason they are closed is that they have turned their backs on
heaven and reversed the things that they could see there, things that are
proper to the deeper levels of the human mind, as we have noted before.
This is why they cannot see what is true and good—because these mat-
ters are in darkness for them, while what is false and evil is in the light.
[ 3 ] Nevertheless, sense-centered people can think logically, some of
them actually with more skill and penetration than other people. How-
ever, they rely on deceptive sensory appearances bolstered by their own
learning, and since they can think logically in this fashion, they think
they are wiser than other people.e The fi re that fuels their reasoning is
the fi re of love for themselves and the world.
These are the people who are devoted to false intelligence and wis-
dom, the ones meant by the Lord in Matthew: “Seeing they do not see,
and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matthew 13 : 13 –
15 ); and again, “Things are hidden from the intelligent and wise and
revealed to children” (Matthew 11 : 25 – 26 ).354 I have been allowed to talk with many scholars after their departure
from our world, with some who were quite renowned and celebrated
throughout the learned world for their publications, as well as with some
who were not so well known but who still had within themselves a hid-
den wisdom.