365. (b) Therefore the Lord flows into everyone with the entire essence of faith and goodwill. This follows from the previous point, since the essence of faith is life from divine wisdom and the essence of goodwill is life from divine love. Therefore, since the Lord is present along with these things that belong to him (namely, divine wisdom and divine love), he is also present along with all the true perceptions related to faith and all the good actions related to goodwill. "Faith" means all the truth from the Lord that we perceive, think, and speak. "Goodwill" means all the goodness from the Lord which moves us and which we then intend and do.

[2] As I said just above, the divine love that emanates from the Lord as a sun is perceived by the angels as heat, and the divine wisdom from that love is perceived as light. Someone who does not think beyond appearances might surmise that the heat I just mentioned is mere heat and that the light is mere light, like the heat and light that emanate from the sun in our world. In fact, the heat and light that emanate from the Lord as a sun hold in their core all the infinities that are in the Lord. That heat holds all the infinities of his love and that light holds all the infinities of his wisdom. Therefore they also hold an infinity that includes everything good related to goodwill and everything true related to faith. The reason for this is that the spiritual sun is present everywhere that its heat and light are present. That sun is a sphere that immediately surrounds the Lord, radiating from his divine love together with his divine wisdom. (As I have noted a number of times before [24, 29, 35, 39, 41, 49, 63, 66, 75-76, 360], the Lord is within that sun.)

[3] These facts make it clear that nothing stands in the way of our being able to draw from the Lord everything good that relates to goodwill and everything true that relates to faith, since he is omnipresent. An example showing that nothing stands in the way is the love and the wisdom that heavens angels have from the Lord. The angels' love and wisdom are beyond words and incomprehensible to our earthly self; they are also capable of increasing to eternity.

The fact that there are infinite things in the heat and light that emanate from the Lord, although they are perceived as simple heat and light, can be illustrated by various phenomena on earth. For example, we hear the tone of someone's voice in speech as a noncomposite sound, yet when angels hear it they perceive in it all that person's feelings, and can list and describe each one. We too can sense to some extent that there are qualities that lie within a voice when we listen to people talking to us. We can tell if there is contempt, ridicule, or hatred, or else goodwill, benevolence, cheerfulness, or other feelings behind what they say. Similar things lie hidden in the visual impression we receive when we look at someone.

[4] This phenomenon can also be illustrated by the fragrances in an ample garden or in a vast field full of flowers. The sweet smell given off by those plants consists of thousands and even tens of thousands of different elements; yet they are sensed as one impression. It is similar with many other things that appear on the outside as something uniform but are inwardly complex.

The source of human attraction and repulsion is feelings that emanate from people's minds. These feelings attract others who have similar feelings and repel others who do not. Although these emanations are countless and are not picked up by any physical sensation, they are perceived by the sensation of our soul as a single thing. In the spiritual world, all connections and associations are formed on the basis of them.

I have mentioned these things to illustrate what I said before about the spiritual light that emanates from the Lord. It contains all things related to wisdom and all things related to faith. It is this light that enables our intellect to see and perceive the objects of reason in an analytical way, just as our eye sees and perceives earthly objects in a proportional way.

Air" in the Bible represents thought, but in a very general way – our capacity to perceive ideas and the way we tend to think, rather than our specific ideas about specific things. We see the world around us through the air, and seeing corresponds to understanding. We hear through the air, and hearing corresponds to being taught and obeying. Birds fly in the air, and they represent specific thoughts and ideas. And breathing itself – taking in air and passing oxygen to the blood – represents our understanding of true spiritual ideas.

In Genesis 1:26, when used with fowls or birds of the air refers to the air we breathe, but sky, or heavens where are stars, and together these terms refer to both the spiritual and natural man, and to their food, or goods and truths. (Arcana Coelestia 57, 58)

In Genesis 3:8, the only Old Testament reference to air is in the phrase "cool of the day" (at the time of the evening breeze) which signifies the period when the church still had some spiritual perception. (Arcana Coelestia 221)

In Revelation 9:2; 16:17, air signifies the divine truth, darkened by infernal falsities. (Apocalypse Explained 541, Apocalypse Revealed 423)

In Revelation 16:17, everyone in the spiritual world breathes air according to his faith. (Apocalypse Revealed 708, Apocalypse Explained 1012, Apocalypse Revealed 708)