603. The human mind is divided into three regions. The lowest is called the natural, the middle the spiritual, the highest the celestial. Regeneration has the effect of raising a person from the lowest or natural region to the higher or spiritual one, and through this to the celestial one. It will be proved in the next section [607-610] that there are three regions in the mind. This then is why a person who is not regenerated is called natural, and one who is regenerated is called spiritual. It is obvious from this that the mind of a regenerated person is raised to the spiritual region, and from its higher position there it can see what is going on in the lower or natural mind. The existence of a lower and a higher region of the mind can be seen and acknowledged by anyone who pays the slightest attention to his own thoughts. For he can see what he is thinking, so he says that he thought or thinks this or that. This would be impossible if there were no interior thought, called perception, which looks down to the lower level called thought.
[2] When a judge has heard or read a long series of cases compiled by an advocate, he groups them together to form a single view in the upper region of his mind, so as to make a universal principle; then he lowers his gaze to the lower region of natural thought, and there arranges his arguments in due order, giving his judgment and sentence in accordance with the upper region of his mind. Is anyone unaware that a person can in one or two moments think about and reach a conclusion on matters which would take him as much as an hour to spell out by means of his lower thought? These instances are quoted to show that the human mind is divided into lower and higher regions.
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