179. There are levels of love and wisdom, consequent levels of warmth and light, and also levels of atmosphere. Without a knowledge that there are levels, what they are and what they are like, what is to follow will be incomprehensible, since there are levels in everything that has been created; therefore they exist in every form. Consequently, I need to discuss levels in this part of Angelic Wisdom.

We can tell clearly from the angels of the three heavens that there are levels of love and wisdom. Angels of the third heaven so surpass angels of the second heaven in love and wisdom, and these in turn so surpass angels of the farthest heaven, that they cannot live in the same place. Their levels of love and wisdom mark them off and separate them. This is why angels of the lower heavens cannot climb up to angels of the higher heavens, and why if they are allowed to climb up they do not see anyone or anything around them. The reason they do not see anyone is that the love and wisdom of the higher angels is on a higher level, a level beyond their perception. Every angel actually is her or his love and wisdom; and love together with wisdom is human in form because God, who is love itself and wisdom itself, is human.

Occasionally I have been allowed to see angels of the farthest heaven go up to angels of the third heaven. When they managed to get there, I heard them complain that they could not see anyone; and yet they were surrounded by angels. They were afterwards told that these angels had been invisible to them because they could not perceive their love and wisdom, and it is love and wisdom that give angels their human appearance.

1854. 'You will be buried at a good old age' means the enjoyment of all goods by those who are the Lord's. This is clear from the fact that people who die and are buried do not die but pass over from an obscure life into one that is bright. For death of the body is but a continuation and also a perfecting of life, when those who are the Lord's enter for the first time into the enjoyment of all goods. That enjoyment is meant by 'a good old age'. The expressions 'they died', 'were buried', and 'were gathered to their fathers' occur quite often, but they do not carry the same meaning in the internal sense as in the sense of the letter. In the internal sense it is the things which belong to life after death, and which are eternal, that are meant, whereas in the sense of the letter it is those which belong to life in the world and which are temporal.

[2] Consequently, when such expressions occur, those who see into the internal sense, as angels do, have no thoughts of such things as have to do with death and burial but with such as have to do with the continuation of life; for they look upon death as nothing else than a casting off of the things which belong to merely earthly matter and to time, and as the continuing of life proper. Indeed they do not know what death is, for death does not enter into any of their thinking. It is the same with people's ages. By the phrase used here, 'at a good old age', angels have no perception at all of old age; indeed they do not know what old age is, for they themselves are constantly moving towards the life of youth and early manhood. It is life such as this, consequently the celestial and spiritual things belonging to it, that are meant when the expression 'a good old age' and others like it occur in the Word.