203. Since the deeper reaches of our own minds, of our volition and discernment, are like the heavens as far as levels are concerned (we are actually miniature heavens as to the deeper reaches of our minds), their processes of perfection are similar. However, these processes are not perceptible to any of us as long as we are living in this world, since we are then on the lowest level; and the higher levels are unrecognizable from the lowest level. After death, though, we can identify them, since then we are on whatever level answers to our love and wisdom. Then we become angels and think and say things that are indescribable to our physical self. The raising up of everything in our minds then is not by some simple ratio but by the threefold ratio that is the ratio of vertical levels. The simple ratio applies to horizontal levels.

The only people who rise or are brought up to those levels, though, are the ones who have been attentive to truths in this world and have applied them to their lives.

231. The existence of these three degrees in people can be seen from the elevation of a person's mind even to the degrees of love and wisdom possessed by angels of the second and third heavens. For all angels were born people, and a person is, in respect to the interior elements which are those of his mind, a heaven in miniature form. Consequently there are from creation as many degrees of height in a person as there are heavens. The human being is furthermore an image and likeness of God, and these three degrees are therefore engraved on a person because they exist in the human God, which is to say, in the Lord.

As for these degrees being in the Lord infinite and uncreated and in people finite and created, this can be seen from points we demonstrated in Part One, as from the following, that the Lord is love and wisdom in Himself, whereas people are recipients of love and wisdom from the Lord; and that nothing can be predicated of the Lord except what is infinite, and nothing of people except what is finite.