These things are inborn in that mind from parents, for man is born and grows up into the things that are in that mind, and is restrained only by the bonds of civil law and by the bonds of moral life from doing them, and from thus manifesting the tendencies of his depraved will.  Who cannot see that the Lord cannot flow in out of heaven into man and teach him and lead him until these evils have been removed?  For they obstruct, repel, pervert, and suffocate the truths and goods of heaven, which present themselves from above, press down, and strive to flow in.  For evils are infernal and goods are heavenly, and everything infernal burns with hatred against everything heavenly.

This makes clear that before the Lord can flow in with heaven out of heaven and form man to the image of heaven, those evils that lie heaped up in the natural mind must needs be removed.  Moreover, as the removal of evils must come first before man can be taught and led by the Lord, the reason is evident why in eight commandments of the Decalogue the evil works that must not be done are recounted, but not the good works that must be done.  Good does not exist together with evil, nor does it exist until evils have been removed; for until then there is no way possible from heaven into man.  Man is like a dark sea, the waters of which must be removed on either side before the Lord in a cloud and in fire can give a passage to the sons of Israel.  The “dark sea” signifies hell, “Pharaoh with the Egyptians” the natural man, and “the sons of Israel” the spiritual man. (A.E., n. 969.)

Communication with heaven is not possible until the evils and the falsities therefrom with which the natural mind is stopped up have been removed; for these are like black clouds between the sun and the eye, or like a wall between the light of heaven and the lumen of a candle in a chamber.  For so long as a man is in the lumen of the natural man only he is like one shut up in a chamber where he sees by a candle.  But as soon as the natural man has been purified from evils and falsities therefrom he is as if he saw through windows in the wall the things of heaven from the light of heaven.  For as soon as evils have been removed, the higher mind, which is called the spiritual mind, is opened, and this, viewed in itself, is a type or image of heaven.  Through this mind the Lord flows in and enables man to see from the light of heaven, and through this He also reforms and at length regenerates the natural man, and implants in it truths in the place of falsities and goods in the place of evils.  This the Lord does through spiritual love, which is a love for truth and good.  Man is then placed in the midst between two loves, between the love of evil and the love of good; and when the love of evil recedes the love of good takes its place.  The love of evil recedes solely through a life according to the commandments of the Decalogue, that is, through refraining from evils there enumerated because they are sins, and finally shunning them as infernal.