ut if he does not live according to Divine order, still God is in
him, but in his highest parts, endowing him with the ability to
understand truth and to will what is good. But as far as man lives
contrary to order, so far he shuts up the lower parts of his mind or
spirit, and prevents God from descending and filling them with His
presence. Then God is in him, but he is not in God.

--_True Christian Religion, nn._ 66, 70

AN INSTRUMENT OF LIFE

Man is an instrument of life, and God alone is life. God pours His
life into His instrument and every part of him, as the sun pours its
heat into a tree and every part of it. God also gives man to feel this
life in himself as his own. God wills that he should do so, that man
may live as of himself according to the laws of order, which are as
many as there are precepts in the Word, and may dispose himself to
receive the love of God. But still God perpetually holds with His
finger the perpendicular above the scales, and regulates, but never
violates by compulsion, man's free decision. Man's free will is from
this: that he feels life in himself as his, and God leaves him so to
feel, that reciprocal conjunction may take place between Him and man.

--_True Christian Religion, n._ 504

"ABIDE IN ME"

Man is so created that he can be more and more closely united to the
Lord. He is so united not by knowledge alone, nor by intelligence
alone, nor even by wisdom alone, but by a life in accordance with
these. The more closely he is united to the Lord, the wiser and
happier he becomes, the more distinctly he seems to himself to be his
own, and the more clearly he perceives that he is the Lord's.

--_Divine Providence, nn._ 32 _et al._

TWO MINDS: TWO WORLDS

Man is so created as to live simultaneously in the natural world and
in the spiritual world. Thus he has an internal and an external nature
or mind; by the former living in the spiritual world, by the latter in
the natural world.

--_Heavenly Doctrine_, n. 36

INALIENABLE POWERS

There are in man from the Lord two capacities by which the human being
is distinguished from the beasts. One capacity is the ability to
understand what is true and what is good. It is called rationality,
and is a capacity of his understanding. The other capacity is the
ability to do the true and the good. It is called freedom, and is a
power of the will. By virtue of his rationality, man can think what he
pleases, as well against God as