323. I have also been allowed to talk with some others who lived in early days and were among the wiser ones of their times. They first appeared in front of me at some distance, and from there they could observe the deeper levels of my thinking. This meant they could observe me very completely, learning a whole series of thoughts from just one of my mental concepts and filling it with delightful elements of wisdom and charming images. I could tell from this that they were among the wiser ones; and I was told that they were from early times. At this point they came nearer, and when I read them something from the Word, they were totally enchanted. I could sense their very delight and pleasure, which stemmed especially from the fact that every least detail of what they were hearing from the Word was an image and indicator of heavenly and spiritual things. They said that in their own day, when they were living in our world, their mode of thinking and speaking and even writing was like this, and that this was the focus of their wisdom.

57. It is owing to this that angels are not angels of themselves, but are angels in consequence of their conjunction with the human God; and that conjunction depends on their reception of Divine good and Divine truth, which are God, and which appear to emanate from Him, even though they are in Him. Moreover, their reception depends on their application of the laws of order - which Divine truths are - to themselves, because of their freedom to think and will in accordance with reason, faculties that they have from the Lord as though they were theirs. The result is their reception of Divine good and Divine truth as though of themselves, and this makes possible a reciprocation of love; for as we said above, ¹ love does not exist unless it is reciprocal.

The same is the case with people on earth.

From these observations it can now for the first time be seen that every constituent of the created universe is a recipient of the Divine love and wisdom of the human God.

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