57. This is why angels are not angels in their own right but are angels by virtue of their union with the Divine-Human One; and their union depends on their acceptance of what is divinely good and what is divinely true. What is divinely good and what is divinely true are God, and seem to emanate from him even though they are within him. Their acceptance depends on the way angels apply the laws of his design, which are divine truths, to themselves, using their freedom to think and intend according to their reason, a freedom given them by God as their own possession. This is what enables them to accept what is divinely good and divinely true in apparent autonomy; and this in turn is what makes possible the mutual element in their love, for as already noted [48], love is not real unless it is mutual. It is the same with us here on earth.

All this enables us finally to see that everything in the created universe is a vessel for the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One.

493. The first state of man after death is like his state in the world, for he is then likewise in externals, having a like face, like speech, and a like "animus", thus a like moral and civil life. So it is that he then does not know but that he is still in the world unless he gives attention to what he encounters and to the things told him by the angels when he was resuscitated-that now he is a spirit (450). Thus is one life continued into the other, and death is merely transition.