6308. That influx is effected through spirits and angels; and the order in which they flow in is evil spirits first, then angels who dispel what those spirits bring. Not that a person is aware of the existence of such influx, because his thought is preserved in a state of freedom created through its being poised between those two kinds of influx and because he does not pay any attention to such things. Wicked people could not know them even if they did pay them any attention, because with them there is no counterpoise of evil and good; but people governed by good can know. They also know from the Word that something is present inside them which is at war with the evil and falsity in them, and that the spiritual man is at war with the natural man, thus that angels who are in the interior and spiritual parts of his being are at war with evil spirits who are in the exterior and natural parts. This also goes to explain why the Church is called the Church militant.
[2] But the evil that flows from evil spirits into a person's thought does him no harm whatever if he does not accept it. If he does accept it however and transfers it from thought to will he makes it his own. When he does that he draws nearer the parts where hellish spirits are and away from the angels of heaven. This is the Lord's teaching in Mark 7:14-27, where He says that the things going into a person do not render him unclean, only those coming out, because they come from his heart or will.
This page is part of 
© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church