76. It does need to be realized, though, that we cannot see angels with our bodily eyes, only with the eyes of our spirit, ¹ because they are in the spiritual world while everything bodily is in the natural world. Like sees like because it is of like substance. Further, the body's visual organ, the eye, is so crude that as everyone knows it does not even see the smaller elements of nature without a lens, much less things that are above the sphere of nature, as are all the realities of the spiritual world. These can be seen by us, though, when we are released from bodily sight and the sight of our spirit is opened. This happens instantly when it pleases the Lord that we should see. It then seems to us exactly as though we were seeing with our bodily eyes. This is how angels were seen by Abraham, Lot, Manoah, and the prophets. This is how the Lord was seen by the disciples after the resurrection. This is the same way, too, in which I have seen angels.

Because this was how the prophets saw, they are called "seers" and "ones whose eyes are opened" (1 Samuel 9:9, Numbers 23:3; 24:3); and the act of enabling them to see this way is called "opening the eyes." This is what happened to Elisha's servant, of whom we read, "Elisha prayed, 'Jehovah, open his eyes, I pray, so that he may see,' and as Jehovah opened the eyes of his servant, behold the mountain was full of horses and fiery chariots surrounding Elisha" (2 Kings 6:17).

Fußnoten:

454. Some spirits think that heaven and heavenly joy consist in a life of ease in which they are waited on by others. But they are told that happiness in no way consists in being inactive and finding happiness in that. This would mean that everybody wished to subordinate other people's happiness to his own, and when everybody wished to do that nobody would have it. Such life would not be an active life but a life of idleness in which they would become listless, even though they may well know that unless one is active there is no happiness in life. Angelic life consists in use, and in good deeds of charity. For angels never feel happier than when they are informing and teaching spirits that stream in from the world, or when they are ministering to men and are preventing the evil spirits with them overstepping the mark, and inspiring men with what is good; also when they are arousing the dead into the life of eternity, and after that introducing such souls into heaven if they are capable of it. The happiness they find in all this is more than can possibly be described. Angels in this way are images of the Lord; they love their neighbour more than themselves; and this is what makes heaven heaven. Consequently angelic happiness consists in use, stems from use, and is proportionate to use, that is, to the good deeds of love and charity. As for those spirits who had adopted the idea that heavenly joy consisted in being idle, and that in idleness they would be experiencing eternal joy, they were allowed - once told all this to make them ashamed of that idea - to perceive what such a life was really like. They perceived that it was an utterly dreary kind of life, and destructive of all joy; and that after a short while they would find it repulsive and nauseating.