20. 2. The one God is substance itself and form itself. Angels and people are substances and forms from him. To the extent that they are in him and he is in them, to that extent they are images and likenesses of him. Because God is the underlying reality, he is also substance. Unless the underlying reality becomes substance it is a figment of the imagination; but as a substance it becomes an entity. And one who is substance is also form, for substance without form is another figment of the imagination. We can attribute both of these to God, provided he is seen as the sole, the only, and the archetypal substance and form.

The work Divine Love and Wisdom, published in Amsterdam in 1763, demonstrates that God's form is the human form itself, that is, that God is the Human Being, and all God's attributes are infinite. That work also shows that angels and people are substances and forms that have been created and arranged to receive divine qualities flowing into them through heaven. In the Book of Creation they are called images and likenesses of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Elsewhere they are called God's children and people born of God.

As the sequence of topics in this book will show in many ways, the more we live under divine guidance, meaning the more we submit to God's leading, the more and more deeply we become an image of God.

If human minds do not form an idea of God as the archetypal substance and form, and of God's form as the Human Form itself, they render themselves highly susceptible to delusions and speculations about God, about the development of the human race, and about the creation of the world. Their thought of God is restricted to a thought of the expanse of nature underlying the universe, or else a thought about emptiness or nothing at all. The development of the human race they think of as a lucky coincidence - elements just happened to come together in this form. As for the creation of the world, they see its substances and forms as originating in geometry's points and then lines; and because these are nondimensional and one-dimensional they are actually nothing. In such minds, everything that has to do with the church is like the river Styx or the thick darkness in Tartarus.

179. There are degrees of love and wisdom, and therefore degrees of heat and light, and so, too, degrees of atmospheres. Unless one is aware of the existence of degrees, and of what they are and their nature, the following observations cannot be comprehended, since there are degrees in every created thing, thus in every form. Therefore in this third part of Divine Love and Wisdom we must take up degrees.

That there are degrees of love and wisdom can be plainly seen from the love and wisdom of the angels of the three heavens. Angels of the third heaven excel angels of the second heaven in their love and wisdom, and these in turn excel angels of the lowest heaven, and this to such an extent that they cannot dwell together. The degrees of their love and wisdom distinguish them and separate them.

So it is that angels of the lower heavens cannot ascend to angels of the higher heavens, and if it is granted them to ascend, they do not then see those higher angels, nor anything of their surroundings. The reason they do not see them is that the love and wisdom of those higher angels is in a higher degree, which transcends their perception. For every angel is an embodiment of his love and wisdom, and love together with wisdom is in its form the human being, because God, who is love itself and wisdom itself, is a human God.

[2] I have been granted several times to see angels of the lowest heaven ascend to angels of the third heaven, and when they had worked their way up there, I heard them complain that they did not see anyone, even though they were surrounded by those higher angels. They were afterward then informed that the higher angels were invisible to them because they were incapable of perceiving those angels' love and wisdom, and that it is an angel's love and wisdom that cause him to be seen as a person.