279. The divine design. The divine truth that emanates from the Lord is the origin of the divine design, and divine goodness is what constitutes its essence: 1728, 2258, 8700, 8988. The Lord himself, then, is the divine design, because divine goodness and divine truth come from the Lord and in fact are the Lord in the heavens and on earth: 1919, 2011, 5110, 5703, 10336, 10619. The laws of the design are divine truths: 2447, 7995. Where there is order the Lord is present; where there is no order the Lord is not present: 5703. Since divine truth is [the basis of] the design and divine goodness constitutes its essence, absolutely everything in the universe must go back to goodness and truth in order to be anything at all, for the very reason that everything goes back to the design: 2451, 3166, 4390, 4409, 5232, 7256, 10122, 10555. Since goodness is the essence of the design, it arranges the truths that form the design; the truths do not arrange the goodness: 3316, 3470, 4302, 5704, 5709, 6028, 6690. The entire heaven, with all its angelic communities, is arranged by the Lord according to his divine design, since the divine nature of the Lord in and among the angels is what constitutes heaven: 6338, 7211, 9338, 10125, 10151, 10157. So heaven's form is a form in keeping with the divine design: 4040-4043, 6607, 9877.

[2] To the extent that we live according to the design-that is, to the extent that we are devoted to doing what is good in response to the divine truths that are the laws of the design-to that extent we are human: 4839. The more we live this way, the more perfectly proportioned and beautiful we will look in the other life; the less we live this way, the more monstrous we will look: 4839, 6605, 6626. Clearly then, all the elements of the divine design have been gathered together in human beings; we have been created to be the divine design in form: 4219, 4220, 4223, 4523, 4524, 5114, 6013, 6057, 6605, 6626, 9706, 10156. Because angels are receptive to the divine design from the Lord, they are in the human form-and in a form that is more perfect and beautiful the more receptive they are: 322, 1880, 1881, 3633, 3804, 4622, 4735, 4797, 4985, 5199, 5530, 6054, 9879, 10177, 10594. Not only that, the angelic heaven, taken as a whole, is like a human being in respect to its form; and this is because the whole heaven, with all its angelic communities, is arranged by the Lord according to the divine design: 2996, 2998, 3624-3649, 3636-3643, 3741-3745, 4625. We can see from this that the Divine-Human Being is the source of all the above: 2996, 2998, 3624-3649, 3741-3745. It also follows from this that the Lord is the only human being, and that we are human only if we are receptive to what is divine from him: 1894. The more receptive we are, the more we become images of the Lord: 8547.

[3] We are born not with goodness and truth but with evil and falsity, so we are not born into the divine design but into something contrary to that design. That is why we are born in utter ignorance and why, in order to be brought into the divine design and thus become human, we must of necessity be born again-that is, regenerated-which is accomplished by means of divine truths from the Lord and by a life in accord with them: 1047, 2307, 2308, 3518, 3812, 8480, 8550, 10283, 10284, 10731. When the Lord is regenerating us, he arranges everything in us according to the divine design-that is, according to the form of heaven: 5700, 6690, 9931, 10303. Anyone who is being led by the Lord is being led according to the divine design: 8512. Those who are in the divine design have deeper levels of the mind that are opened into heaven all the way to the Lord; those who are not in the divine design have deeper levels of the mind that are closed: 8513. The more we live according to the divine design, the more intelligence and wisdom we have: 2592.

[4] The Lord governs everything from the inmost to the outermost elements of the design; he governs the inmost elements from the outermost and the outermost from the inmost, and this is how he keeps everything connected and coordinated: 3702, 3739, 6056, 9828. On sequential order and on the last stage of that order, in which sequential elements are all together and yet the order of their succession is preserved: 634, 3691, 4145, 5114, 5897, 6239, 6326, 6465, 8603, 9216, 9828, 9836, 10044, 10099, 10335.

[5] Things that are evil and false are contrary to the design, and yet the Lord still governs them, not according to the design but based on their opposition to it: 4839, 7877, 10778. Things that are evil and false are governed through the laws of permission, and this is done for the sake of the design: 7877, 8700, 10778. Some things are impossible because they are contrary to the divine design-for example, it is impossible for someone whose life is devoted to evil to be saved out of pure mercy, and it is impossible for evil people to be in the company of good people in the other life, among many other things: 8700.