271. The reason angels of the third heaven are like this is that they are centered in love for the Lord, and that love opens the deeper levels of the mind to the third level and is open to and retentive of all wisdom. It should also be known that angels of the inmost heaven are constantly being even more perfected in wisdom and that this too happens differently than for angels of the outmost heaven. Angels of the inmost heaven do not store up divine truths in their memory or translate them into information. Rather, as soon as they hear them, they grasp them and apply them to their lives. This is why divine truths for them are virtually engraved, because anything that is committed to life is to that extent internalized. It is different, though, for angels of the outmost heaven. They first assign divine truths to their memory and store them in the form of information. Then they retrieve them and use them to perfect their understanding; and without any deeper grasp of their truth, they intend them and commit them to life. Consequently, things are relatively cloudy for them.

It is worth noting that angels of the third heaven are perfected in wisdom through hearing rather than through seeing. What they hear through preaching does not go into their memory but directly into their perception and intention and becomes a matter of their life. What they see with their eyes, though, does go into their memory, and they think and talk about it. This has enabled me to see that the path of hearing is the path of wisdom for them. This too is because of correspondence, since the ear corresponds to obedience, and obedience has to do with the way we live; while the eye corresponds to intelligence, and intelligence is a matter of doctrine. ¹ The state of these angels is described in many places in the Word; for instance in Jeremiah:

I will put my law in their mind and write it on their heart. No longer will anyone teach a friend or a brother by saying "Know the Lord," for all the people there are will know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

And in Matthew,

Let your conversation be "Yes, yes; no, no," for anything beyond this comes from evil. (Matthew 5:36, 5:37)

The reason anything beyond this comes from evil is that it is not from the Lord; for the truths that are resident within angels of the third heaven are from the Lord because they are centered in a love for him. Love for the Lord in that heaven is intending and doing divine truth, for divine truth is the Lord in heaven.

Poznámky pod čarou:

4526. To take further the correspondence of the sight of the eye, begun at the end of the previous chapter, it should be recognized that its correspondence is with the things of the understanding, for the understanding is internal sight and this internal sight functions in the light which is above the light of the world. The reason why man is able to acquire intelligence to himself by means of the things which are seen by him in the light of the world is that a higher light, or the light of heaven, flows into the objects made visible by the light of the world and causes them to be seen in a representative and correspondential fashion. For the light that is above the light of the world is that which proceeds from the Lord who enlightens the whole of heaven. Intelligence and wisdom themselves which come from the Lord are seen there as light, and it is this light which constitutes man's understanding or internal sight. When that light is flowing in through the understanding into the objects made visible by the light of the world it causes them to be seen in a representative and correspondential fashion, and so to be seen with understanding. And because the sight of the eye which operates in the natural world corresponds to the sight of the understanding which operates in the spiritual world, it corresponds to the truths of faith, for these belong to a genuine understanding. Indeed truths constitute the whole understanding of man, for every part of his thought revolves around the matter of whether something is so or not so, that is, whether it is true or not true. As regards the sight of the eye corresponding to the truths and goods of faith, see above in 4410.