564. Moreover, I was able to grasp many things from them because they only think, and are not interested in particulars. 1) For example, when I was considering what the Light of understanding is, namely that it is the light of truth flowing in from our Lord, and in fact, a higher knowledge of universal truths, such as that our Lord governs all things, then [I understood] that personal knowledge obscures this light, and that such details, or truths about details, are in that general light like the variations that cause colors in the world - for which reason regeneration is also compared to the rainbow. 2) I further understood that it is the thinking that makes a human being's quality. When the thinking only clings to worldly and bodily things, then the understanding attaches itself to them to such an extent that the person cannot possibly speak with the Heaven of spirits; for the thought rushes outwards, and into oneself, the world, and nature, causing persisting fantasies in the other life that must be shaken off and die, which takes place by a painful separation process. It is different in the case of those who are absorbed only in thoughts about the Lord, thus about things of heaven. 3) There is therefore a twofold arc of the rainbow: one, which [newly arrived] souls love, arising from fantasies joined to what is spiritual; the other, arising from a spectrum of spiritual and heavenly elements, without anything of nature, and such is the very inward heaven. 1748, the 26th day of January.