10054. 'It is an odour of rest' means the perception of peace. This is clear from the meaning of 'an odour' as perception, dealt with in 3577, 4624-4634, 4748; and from the meaning of 'rest' as peace. What Divine peace in the heavens is, see 92, 93, 2780, 5662, 8455, 8665, 8722; in the highest sense 'peace' means the Lord, and the Divine emanation from Him that influences at an inmost level the good which reigns in the heavens, 3780, 8517. The reason why the burnt offering is called 'an odour of rest to Jehovah' is that a burnt offering represented the uniting of the Lord's Divine Human to Divinity itself, dealt with above in 10053; and it was through that uniting that peace was attained in the heavens. For when the Lord was in the world all the hells were subdued by Him, and all the heavens were restored to order, 9715, 9809, 9937, 10019. From this it is evident how it comes about that a burnt offering is called 'an odour of rest to Jehovah', as it is many times elsewhere in which burnt offerings and minchah are the subject, such as Leviticus 1:9, 13, 17; 2:2, 9, 12; 3:5; 4:31; 6:15, 21; 8:28; 23:13, 18; Numbers 15:3, 7, 13; 28:6, 8, 13; 29:2, 6, 8, 13.

7072. After this I represented to them birds of the air, large and small, such as exist on our planet; for these kinds of things can be represented in the next life in a lifelike manner, the actual speech of spirits and angels being full of representations. When they saw the birds that were represented, they wished initially to turn them into something different; but they grew pleased with them and ceased wishing to do so. The reason for this was that birds of the air mean the knowledge of things, and at this time a perception of that fact was flowing into them. Therefore they refrained from turning them into something different and so from turning away the ideas in their memory. After that I was allowed to represent before them a very lovely garden full of lamp-posts and lights. This time they did nothing and held back, for the reason that lamp-posts with lights mean truths which shine from good. From this it was evident that they could go on looking at material things provided that at the same time the meaning which those things have in the spiritual sense was introduced. For the ideas that belong to the spiritual sense are devoid of material associations.