116. However, this calls for an explanation of how angels can feel and sense this as their own and so accept and retain it when in fact it is not theirs, given the statement that angels are not angels on their own but by virtue of what is within them from the Lord. The essence of the matter is this. There is freedom and rationality in every angel. These two qualities are there so that angels can be open to love and wisdom from the Lord. Neither of these, though--neither the freedom nor the rationality--belongs to the angels. They are in them but belong to the Lord. However, since these two elements are intimately united to angels' life, so intimately united that you could call them linked to their life, it seems as though they belong to the angels. Freedom and rationality enable them to think and intend and to speak and act; and what they think, intend, speak, and act as a result seems to be done on their own. This gives rise to the reciprocal element that is the means to union.

Still, the more that angels believe that love and wisdom are within them and claim them for themselves as their own, the more there is nothing angelic within them. To the same extent, then, there is no union with the Lord for them. They are outside the truth; and since truth is identical with heaven's light, they are correspondingly unable to be in heaven. This leads to a denial that they live from the Lord and a belief that they live on their own and therefore that they possess some divine essence. The life called angelic and human consists of these two elements--freedom and rationality.

This leads to the conclusion that angels have a reciprocal ability for the sake of their union with the Lord, but that the reciprocal element, seen as an ability, is the Lord's and not theirs. As a result, angels fall from angelhood if they abuse this reciprocal element that enables them to feel and sense what is the Lord's as their own by actually claiming it for themselves. The Lord himself teaches us in John 14:20-24, 15:4-5, 6 that union is reciprocal, and in John 15:7 that the Lord's union with us and ours with him occurs in things that belong to him, things called "his words."

322. That the universe of the spiritual world resembles in an image the human being can be plainly seen from the fact that all the phenomena just enumerated in no. 321 vividly appear and take form around an angel and around angelic societies as effects seemingly produced or created by them - effects that remain around them and do not go away. Their being effects seemingly produced or created by them follows from the fact that when an angel leaves, or when a society transfers elsewhere, the phenomena no longer appear. Moreover, when other angels come in their stead, the appearance of all their surroundings changes. Parks change in respect to the trees and fruits they contain. Flower gardens change in respect to the kinds of roses and seeds found in them. Fields change as well in respect to their herbs and grasses, and the species of animals and birds change, too.

[2] These phenomena take form and change as described because they all exist in accordance with the affections and consequent thoughts of the angels. For they are correspondent forms. And because forms that correspond accord with that to which they correspond, therefore they are a representative image of it.

This image is not apparent when any of these phenomena are viewed in terms of their forms, but it is seen when they are viewed in terms of their uses.

I have been given to see that when angels have their eyes opened by the Lord and view these phenomena from the perspective of their corresponding uses, they recognize and see themselves in them.