330. Since the goal of creation is a heaven from the human race (and therefore the human race itself), the intermediate goals are everything else that has been created. Because these do relate to us, they focus on these three aspects of us: our bodies, our rational functioning, and, for the sake of our union with the Lord, our spiritual functioning. We cannot be united to the Lord unless we are spiritual; we cannot be spiritual unless we are rational; and we cannot be rational unless we are physically whole. These aspects are like a house, with the body as its foundation, the structure of the house as our rational functioning, and the contents of the house as our spiritual functioning. Living in the house is union with the Lord.

This enables us to see the sequence, level, and focus of the relationship to us of the useful functions that are intermediate goals of creation. That is, they are for the support of our bodies, for the development of our rational ability, and for our acceptance of what is spiritual from the Lord.

1630. Spirits are highly indignant that men have no conception of the life of spirits and angels, or that men imagine that they dwell in a state of obscurity, which must be very miserable, and that they are so to speak in an empty void, when in fact they live in the strongest light, can enjoy all good things with every one of their senses, so much so that they are able to perceive them most intimately. There were also certain souls recently arrived from the world who, on account of the assumptions they had adopted there, had brought with them the idea that such things did not exist in the next life. They were therefore taken into angels' homes, where they talked to them and saw those things. When they resumed they said they perceived that it was true and that such things were indeed a reality, and that they never had nor could have believed it during their lifetime. They also said that these things belonged inevitably among the wonderful things people do not believe because they do not have any conception of them. As however this is an experience of the senses, although of the interior senses, they are told this, that they still ought not to doubt the reality of things merely because they do not have any conception of them. Indeed, they are told, if they believed nothing except that of which they have some conception, they would believe nothing concerning things of an interior nature, still less those of eternal life. Here lies the reason for the insanity of our own times.