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.

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4652. CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GRAND MAN, WHICH IS HEAVEN - continued

IN THIS SECTION THE CORRESPONDENCE OF HEARING AND OF THE EARS WITH HEAVEN

The nature of the correspondence that exists between the soul and the body - that is, between the things constituting a person's inward spirit and those constituting his outward body - may be clearly recognized from the correspondence, influx, and communication of thought and discernment, which are functions of the spirit, with speech and hearing, which are functions of the body. When a person is speaking, his thought is nothing else than the power of speech which his spirit possesses, while his discernment of speech is nothing else than the power of hearing which his spirit possesses. When a person speaks, his thought does not, it is true, present itself to him as speech because it links itself to and is present within the power of speech that his body possesses. And when he hears something his discernment of it seems to him to be simply a hearing within his ear. For this reason the majority of people who have not stopped to reflect on the matter do not know that all five senses are located somewhere else than within organs belonging to the body; so they think that when these organs cease to function through death no sensory perception remains, when in actual fact a person, that is, his spirit, then passes into a life of perfect sensory perception.

[2] The fact that it is the spirit which has the powers of speech and hearing has become quite clear to me from my conversations with spirits. Their speech was communicated to my spirit; it entered my own interior power of speech, and from there into the organs corresponding to it. What they communicated ended as an endeavour in me, which I have perceived clearly on several occasions. Consequently I have heard what they said in tones as clear as anything spoken by someone on earth. Sometimes spirits have spoken to me while I was among a group of people, and some of those spirits have imagined that, because I could hear so clearly what they - the spirits - said, those people present with me could hear them too. But I have told them that their speech was flowing into my ear by the internal route, whereas human speech comes in by the external route. From this one may see how a spirit spoke to one of the prophets - not as a man speaks to another man but as a spirit speaks to a man, that is to say, within him - as in Zechariah 1:9, 13, 19; 2:3; 4:1, 4-5; 5:5, 10; 6:4; and elsewhere. But I realize that these matters are unintelligible to people who do not believe that man is a spirit, the body serving him solely for functions to be performed in the world. Those who have become quite convinced that man is not a spirit refuse even to listen to talk about any kind of correspondence; and if they do listen they reject what they hear because they have a negative attitude Indeed they are unhappy if anything is said not to belong to the body.