within earthly goodwill. The two come together with every step we take
as we progress from the physical world into the spiritual world. We make
this progress as we believe in the Lord, who is the light itself, the way, the
truth, and the life, as he himself teaches.
[ 3 ] Since this is the case, when we have spiritual faith we clearly also
have earthly faith, in that spiritual faith lies within earthly faith, as I just
said. And because faith relates to light, it follows that when spiritual faith
comes into us our earthly self becomes translucent, so to speak. Our
earthly self also becomes beautifully colored, depending on how united
our faith is to goodwill. The reason it takes on colors is that goodwill is a
glowing red and faith is a shining white. Goodwill glows red with the
flame of spiritual fire, and faith shines white with the brilliance of the light
from that fire.
Just the opposite happens, however, if we do not have spirituality in
our earthly self, but instead have something earthly in our spirituality.
This is what happens to people who reject faith and goodwill. For these
people, the inner level of the mind, where they go when they are left to
their own thinking, is hellish. In fact, although they do not realize it, their
thinking comes from hell. The outer level of their mind, from which they
operate when they are talking to their friends in the world, may be spiri-
tual in a way, but it is also riddled with things that are like the filthiness of
hell. These people are in fact in hell, in the sense that they are in a state
that is upside-down compared to the state of the people we were talking
about before.361 People who have faith in the Lord and goodwill toward their neighbor
have spirituality within their earthly self, and as a result their earthly self
becomes translucent. Once we realize this, we can see that the more
translucent their earthly self becomes, the more wisdom they have about
spiritual things. They also have more wisdom about earthly things,
because as they are thinking, reading, or hearing about something, they see
inside themselves whether it is true or not. This is an awareness they have
from the Lord as spiritual light and heat flow down from him into the
higher sphere of their intellect.
[ 2 ] The more spiritual our faith and our goodwill become, the more
we are drawn away from our self-centeredness. We do not focus on our-
selves, on payment, or on reward; we focus only on the pleasure of per-
ceiving truths that relate to faith and doing good actions that relate to
love. The more our spirituality increases, the more blissful that pleasure