hings greatest and least of the universe, both
living and dead, there is action and reaction, from which comes an
equilibrium of all things; this is destroyed when action overcomes
reaction, or the reverse. It is the same with the natural and with the
spiritual mind. When the natural mind acts from the enjoyments of its
love and the pleasures of its thought, which are in themselves evils and
falsities, the reaction of the natural mind removes those things which
are of the spiritual mind and blocks the doors lest they enter, and it
makes action to come from such things as agree with its reaction. The
result is an action and reaction of the natural mind opposite to the
action and reaction of the spiritual mind, whereby there is a closing
of the spiritual mind like the twisting back of a spiral. But when the
spiritual mind is opened, the action and reaction of the natural mind
are inverted; for the spiritual mind acts from above or within, and at
the same time it acts from below or from without, through those things
in the natural mind which are arranged in compliance with it; and it
twists back the spiral in which the action and reaction of the natural
mind lie. For the natural mind is by birth in opposition to the things
belonging to the spiritual mind; an opposition derived, as is well known,
from parents by heredity. Such is the change of state which is called
reformation and regeneration. The state of the natural mind before
reformation may be compared to a spiral twisting or bending itself
downward; but after reformation it may be compared to a spiral twisting
or bending itself upwards; therefore man before reformation looks
downwards to hell, but after reformation looks upwards to heaven.

264. THE ORIGIN OF EVIL IS FROM THE ABUSE OF THE CAPACITIES PROPER TO
MAN, THAT ARE CALLED RATIONALITY AND FREEDOM.

By rationality is meant the capacity to understand what is true and
thereby what is false, also to understand what is good and thereby what
is evil; and by freedom is meant the capacity to think, will and do these
things freely. From what precedes it is evident, and it will become more
evident from what follows, that every man from creation, consequently
from birth, has these two capacities, and that they are from the Lord;
that they are not taken away from man; that from them is the appearance
that man thinks, speaks, wills, and acts as from himself; that the Lord
dwells in these capacities in every man, that man b