115. Still, there is no understanding how the Lord is in an angel and an angel is in the Lord except through knowing what kind of union is involved. It is a union of the Lord with the angel and of the angel with the Lord, so it is a reciprocal union. On the angel's side, it is like this. Angels, like us, simply feel as though they participate in love and wisdom on their own, and therefore that love and wisdom are theirs, their very own. If they did not feel this way there would be no union, so the Lord would not be in them, nor they in the Lord. It cannot happen that the Lord is in any angels or people unless they, as subjects of his presence in love and wisdom, sense and feel this as their own. This enables them not only to accept but also to retain what they have accepted, and to love in response. This, then, is how angels become wise and remain wise. Can people decide to love God and their neighbor, can people decide to gain wisdom, unless they feel and sense that what they love, learn, and gain is their own? Can they retain anything in themselves otherwise? If it were not for this, then the inflowing love and wisdom would have no seat. They would flow right through without making any difference; and as a result angels would not be angels and people would not be human. They would be virtually lifeless.

It makes sense, then, that if there is to be union, there must be reciprocity.

9813. 'The sons of Aaron' means things which emanate from the Divine Celestial. This is clear from the meaning of 'the sons' as things which are born from another as from a father, thus things which emanate from it; and from the representation of 'Aaron' as the Lord in respect of the Divine Celestial, dealt with just above in 9810. From this it is evident that by 'the sons of Aaron' things which emanate from the Divine Celestial are meant.

1881. Spirits are highly indignant, indeed they are irate, when told that men do not believe that spirits see, that they hear, and that they feel by touch. They have said that men ought to know this much, that without sensory awareness there is no life, and the more superior that awareness is, the more excellent is the life; that the objects perceived by people's senses are perfectly suited to the excellence of their sensory awareness; and that the representatives which derive from the Lord are real existences, for they are the source from which all things in the natural order and in the world exist, 1632. They are words expressing their indignation when spirits declare that they possess far better and more excellent sensory awareness than men.