“Blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear” (xiii. 16).

Here, too, the “eyes” signify the understanding of truth and belief in it; so “to see” signifies to understand and believe, and the “ears” signify obedience, thus a life according to the truths of faith, and “to hear” signifies to obey and live.  For one is blessed not because he sees and hears, but because he understands, believes, obeys, and lives.  In the same,

“The lamp of the body is the eye; if the eye be sound the whole body is light, if the eye be evil the whole body is darkened.  If, therefore, the light . . . be darkness, how great is the darkness” (vi. 22, 23).

Here, again, the “eye” signifies the understanding of truth and belief in it, which is called a lamp from the light of truth that man has from understanding and belief.  And because a man becomes wise from understanding and believing in truth, it is said “if the eye be sound the whole body is light.”  The “body” means the man, and “to be light” means to be wise.  But it is the reverse with the “evil eye,” that is, understanding and believing in falsity.  “Darkness” means falsities, “if the light be darkness” signifies if the truth be false or falsified, and because truth falsified is worse than any other falsity, it is said, “If the light be darkness, how great is the darkness.”

These few examples make clear what correspondence is and what influx is, namely, that the eye is a correspondence of the understanding and faith, the heart a correspondence of the will and love, the ears a correspondence of obedience, the lamp and light correspondences of truth, and darkness a correspondence of falsity, and so on; and as the one is spiritual and the other is natural, and the spiritual acts into the natural and forms it to a likeness of itself that it may appear before the eyes or before the world, so that action is influx.  Such is the Word in each and every particular. (A.E., n. 1081.)

The spiritual by influx presents what is correspondent to itself in the natural, in order that the end may become a cause, and the cause become an effect, and thus the end through the cause may present itself in the effect as visible and sensible.  This trine, namely, end, cause, and effect, exists from creation in every heaven.  The end is good of love, the cause is truth from that good, and the effect is use.  The producing force is love, and the product therefrom is of love from good by means of truth.  The final products, which are in our world, are various, as numerous as the objects are in its three kingdoms of nature, animal, vegetable, and mineral.  All products are correspondences.  As this trine, namely, end, cause, and effect, exists in each heaven, there must be in each heaven products that are correspondences, and that are like in form and aspect the objects in the three kingdoms of our earth; from which it is clear that each heaven is like our earth in outward