The people of the Most Ancient Church had begun wanting to lead themselves and think from themselves instead of from the Lord. The Lord knew it would be their downfall, and sought to fulfill them through the spiritual gifts they already had in their celestial state.

Here we see the Lord showing them the presence in themselves (the ground) of all the beautiful things of their state: affections springing from love to the Lord (the beasts of the field), thoughts inspired by mutual love (fowl of the air) and all other spiritual activity filled with life from the Lord (living creatures). And theses things were gifts; the fact that the people were invited to name the animals means they were shown the nature of all those wonderful things.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 142, 143, 144, 145)

5986. It is worth my mentioning that it has happened many times and thereby been proved to me that no one person's thought, speech, will, or action - either in heaven or in hell - originates in the person himself but comes from others, so that ultimately every individual is dependent on the all-embracing inflow of life from the Lord. When I have heard others saying that nothing of a subordinate's thought or speech originated in himself, yet the subordinate imagined that it did come solely from himself, I have been allowed on many occasions to talk to those entering the subordinate. Whenever they would argue that their own thought and speech originated in themselves unlike a subordinate's - and because they really thought this was so - I have also been allowed to tell them that their idea is false. I have told them that they, exactly like a subordinate, derived their thought and speech from others. To prove the point I was allowed to talk to the spirits entering them; and when these spirits professed much the same, I was allowed to talk in turn to the ones entering them, and so on in unbroken sequence. This proved that each individual's thought and speech came from others. The experience made the spirits highly indignant, for each of them wants his thought and speech to originate in himself. But because the experience served to teach them the truth of the matter, they were told that the whole of their thought, and of their will too, is something that comes into them, for the reason that there is but one life alone, which is the source of the life those mental powers possess. That life flows in from the Lord, employing an amazing form, the heavenly form; it flows not only into all people universally but also into each individual specifically. Variation occurs in every case, determined by the form each subordinate recipient possesses, in the measure that the form agrees or does not agree with the heavenly one. From all this one may also see what the situation is with man, who will be dealt with in what follows where influx is the subject.