304. We have been so created that we have a connection and a union with the Lord, while with angels we have only an association. The reason we have only an association, not a union, with angels is that we are from creation like angels in respect to the deeper levels of our minds. We have a similar purposefulness and a similar capacity to understand. This is why we become angels after death if we have lived according to the divine pattern, and why we then, like the angels, have wisdom. So when we talk about our union with heaven, we mean our union with the Lord and our association with angels, since heaven is not heaven because of anything that really belongs to the angels but because of the divine nature of the Lord. (On the fact that the Lord's divine nature makes heaven, see 7-22 [7-12] above.)

[2] Over and above what angels have, though, there is the fact that we are not just in a spiritual world by virtue of our inner natures but are at the same time in a natural world by virtue of our outward natures. These outward things that are in the natural world are all the contents of our natural or outer memory and the thinking and imaging we do on that basis. In general, this includes our insights and information together with their delights and charm to the extent that they have a worldly flavor, and all the pleasures that derive from our physical senses. Then too, there are those senses themselves and our words and actions. All these are ultimate things in which the Lord's divine inflow comes to rest, since it does not stop in the middle but goes on to its very limit.

We may gather from this that the ultimate form of the divine pattern is in us, and since it is the ultimate form, it is the basis and foundation.

[3] Since the Lord's divine inflow does not stop in the middle but goes on to its very limit, as just stated, and since the intermediate region it crosses is the angelic heaven and the limit is in us, and since nothing disconnected can exist, it follows that there is such a connection and union of heaven with the human race that neither can endure without the other. If the human race were cut off from heaven, it would be like a chain with a link removed, and heaven without the human race would be like a house without a foundation. ¹

Footnotes:

2551. 'What did you see, that you have done this thing?' means a looking into the cause. This is evident without explanation, as well as from what follows where the cause is stated. The reason ideas of how the Lord perceived and thought regarding the doctrine of faith, and regarding the rational, whether it should be consulted, are presented in that particular order in the internal sense is that it is angel-like to think about them in such a sequence. The internal sense of the Word exists in particular for angels, and has accordingly been rendered suitable to their perceptions and thoughts. For them these are experiences of delight, indeed of bliss and of happiness, when they are thinking about the Lord, about His Divinity and His Humanity, and about how the latter was made Divine. For when thinking about these they are encompassed by a celestial and spiritual sphere which is filled with the Lord, so that it may be said of them that they are in the Lord. Consequently nothing is more blissful and happy for them than to think in accordance with those things which belong to that sphere and to the affection resulting from this. What is more, they are at the same time instructed and perfected, in particular in the matter of how as He grew up the Lord by degrees and from His own power made Divine the human into which He had been born, and thus how, by means of knowledge and cognitions which He revealed to Himself, He perfected His rational, gradually dispelled its shadows, and brought it into Divine light. When the Word is being read, these and countless other realities are presented to angels in a celestial and spiritual fashion, together with thousands and thousands of representatives in the light of life. But these matters which to angels are so precious are to men of little importance since they are above and beyond them and so are lost in the darkened parts of their understanding. Conversely those which are precious to men, such as hold worldly matters within them, are to angels of little importance since they are beneath their state of existence and so are lost in the darkened parts of their wisdom. Thus, wondrous to tell, the very things which enter the darkened parts of man's mind, and almost into his contempt, pass into the light angels enjoy and into their affection, as do many things which belong to the internal sense of the Word.