40. Divine love and wisdom is substance and is form. The everyday concept of love and wisdom is that they are something floating around in, or breathed out by, thin air or ether. Hardly anyone considers that in reality and in function they are substance and form.

Even people who do see that love and wisdom are substance and form sense them as something outside their subject, flowing from it; and they refer to what in their perceptions is outside the subject and flowing from it as substance and form even though they sense it as floating around. They do not realize that love and wisdom are the actual subject, and that what they sense as floating out from the subject is only the appearance of the inherent state of the subject.

There are many reasons why this has not come to light before. One of them is that appearances are the first things the human mind draws on in forming its understanding, and the only way to dispel these appearances is through careful probing into cause. If a cause is deeply hidden, we cannot probe into it unless we keep our discernment in spiritual light for a protracted period of time; and we cannot hold it there for a long time because of the earthly light that keeps pulling us back.

Still, the truth is that love and wisdom are the real and functional substance and form that make up the very subject.

222. There are levels of both kinds in everything that has been created, no matter how large or small. There is no way to offer visible examples of the fact that the largest and smallest things of all are made up of distinct and gradual, or vertical and horizontal, levels, because the smallest things that occur are not visible to our eyes and the largest do not seem to be marked off into levels. The only available way to explain this principle, then, is by looking to universal phenomena; and since angels are engaged in wisdom on the basis of universal principles and derive knowledge about details on that basis, I may offer some of the things they have said on the subject.