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:
1. [Swedenborg's footnote] Nothing arises from itself, but only from something prior to itself; so all things come from a first, and endure by connection with what they originated from, so that existing is a constant becoming: 2886, 2888, 3627-3628, 3648, 4523-4524, 6040, 6056. The divine pattern does not stop in the middle but keeps on to its limit, and its limit is in us; so the divine pattern ends in us: 634, 2853, 3632, 5897, 6239, 6451, 6465, 9216-9217 [9215?], 9824, 9828, 9836, 9905, 10044, 10329, 10335, 10548. The inner elements flow sequentially into the outer all the way to the end or limit, and there they take form and endure: 634, 6239, 6465, 9216-9217 [9215?]. The inner elements take form and endure in the outer in a simultaneous arrangement, which is described: 5897, 6451, 8603, 10099. So all the inner elements are kept connected together from the First to the ultimate: 9828. For this reason, "the First and the Last" means everything in detail, the whole: 10044, 10329, 10335; and for this reason, strength and power are in ultimate things: 9836.
