180. It is even clearer that there are levels of love and wisdom if we compare angels' love and wisdom with our love and wisdom. It is generally acknowledged that the wisdom of angels is unutterable, relatively speaking. You will see later [267, 416] that it is also incomprehensible to us when we are wrapped up in our earthly love. The reason it seems unutterable and incomprehensible is that it is on a higher level.

795. Since this is how it is there, I have conversations every day with the races and peoples of this world. I have interaction not only with people in Europe but also people in Asia and Africa. I talk to people of a variety of religions. Therefore by way of an epilogue to this work I will add a brief description of the state of some of them.

Keep in mind that in the spiritual world, the state of every race and people in general and of each individual in particular depends on their acknowledgment and worship of God. All those who acknowledge God at heart, and from now on, who acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as God the Redeemer and Savior, are in heaven. People who do not acknowledge him are beneath heaven and are given instruction there. Those who accept the instruction are lifted up into heaven. Those who do not accept it are cast down into hell. In this second group are people like the Socinians, who turn to God the Father alone, and people like the Arians, who have denied that the Lord's human manifestation was divine. The Lord himself said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6); and when Philip asked to see the Father, the Lord said to him, "Those who see and recognize me, see and recognize the Father" (John 14:7 and following).

416, 15. Otherwise, love or volition pulls wisdom or discernment back from its height so that they act in unison. There is earthly love and there is spiritual love. When we are engaged in earthly love and spiritual love together, then we are rational people. When we are engaged solely in earthly love, though, we can think just as rationally as spiritual people, but we are not really rational individuals. We do lift our discernment up into heaven's light, into wisdom, but the matters of wisdom or heaven's light are not objects of our love. It is our love that is making this happen, but behind it is a desire for respect, praise, and profit. However, once we realize that we are not getting any benefit from this elevation (as we do realize when we are thinking to ourselves on the basis of our earthly love), then we have no love for matters of heaven's light or wisdom. So our love then pulls our discernment down from its height so that the two will act in unison.

For example, when our discernment is filled with wisdom because it has been lifted up, then our love sees what justice, honesty, and chastity are, even what real love is. Earthly love can see this because of its ability to understand and ponder things in heaven's light. It can even talk about, preach, and describe these as both moral and spiritual virtues. When our discernment is not lifted up, though, then if our love is merely earthly it does not see these virtues. It sees injustice as justice, deception as honesty, lust as chastity, and so on. If we do think about the matters we discussed when our discernment was at its height, then we may make fun of them and think that they serve us only to ensnare people's minds.

We can therefore tell how to understand the statement that unless love loves its spouse, wisdom, to that degree, it pulls it down from its height so that they act in unison. (On love's ability to be lifted up if it does love wisdom to that degree, see 414 above.)