170. The grand purpose, or the purpose of all elements of creation, is an eternal union of the Creator with the created universe. This does not happen unless there are subjects in which his divinity can be at home, so to speak, subjects in which it can dwell and abide. For these subjects to be his dwellings and homes they must be receptive of his love and wisdom apparently of their own accord, subjects who will with apparent autonomy raise themselves toward the Creator and unite themselves with him. In the absence of this reciprocity, there is no union.

We are those subjects, people who can raise themselves and unite with apparent autonomy. I have already explained several times [4-6, 57, 68, 116] that we are subjects of this sort and that we are receptive of Divinity with apparent autonomy.

Through this union, the Lord is present in every work he has created, since in the last analysis everything has been created for our sake. As a result, the functions of all created things rise level by level from the lowest things to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source, as explained in 65-68 above.

45. Anyone who can with some thought conceive of and comprehend being and expression in itself must altogether conceive of and comprehend that it is the one and only absolute. The term absolute is used of that which alone is, and the term one and only of that which is the origin of everything else.

Now because the one and only absolute is substance and form, it follows that it is the one and only absolute substance and form. And because that absolute substance and form is Divine love and wisdom, it follows that it is the one and only absolute love, and the one and only absolute wisdom; consequently, that it is the one and only absolute essence, and the one and only absolute life. For love and wisdom together are life.

4. God alone--the Lord--is love itself, because he is life itself. Both we on earth and angels are life-receivers. I will be offering many illustrations of this in works on divine providence and life. Here I would say only that the Lord, who is the God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite, while we and angels are created and finite. Since the Lord is uncreated and infinite, he is that essential reality that is called Jehovah and is life itself or life in itself. No one can be created directly from the Uncreated, the Infinite, from Reality itself and Life itself, because what is divine is one and undivided. We must be created out of things created and finite, things so formed that something divine can dwell within. Since we and angels are of this nature, we are life-receivers. So if we let ourselves be misled in thought so badly that we think we are not life-receivers but are actually life, there is no way to keep us from thinking that we are God.

Our sense that we are life and our consequent belief that we are life rests on an illusion: in an instrumental cause, the presence of its principal cause is only felt as something identical to itself. The Lord himself teaches that he is life in itself in John: "As the Father has life in himself, so too he has granted the Son to have life in himself" (5:26); and again in John (11:25; 14:6) he teaches that he is life itself. Since life and love are one and the same, as we can see from the first two sections above, it follows that the Lord, being life itself, is love itself.