364. (i) The Lord flows into every human being with all His Divine love, all His Divine wisdom, and so with all His Divine life.

We read in the Book of Creation that man was created an image of God, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 1:27; 2:7). This description means that he is an organ of life, not life itself. For God could not have created another like Himself; if He could have done so, there would be as many gods as there are people. Nor could He create life, just as neither can light be created. But He could create man to be a form for life to act on, just as He created the eye to be a form for light to act on. Nor could God, nor can He, divide His essence, since it is one and indivisible. So since God alone is life, it follows indubitably that God uses His own life to give life to every human being. Without that quickening man would be as regards flesh nothing but a sponge, and as regards bones nothing but a skeleton, no more alive than a clock, which is kept running by a pendulum together with a weight or a spring. Since this is so, it also follows that God flows in with every person with all His Divine life, that is, with all His Divine love and Divine wisdom. These two make up His Divine life (39-40 above); for the Divine cannot be divided.

[2] However, the manner in which God flows in with all His Divine life can be grasped as somewhat resembling the way the sun of the world flows in with all its essence, which is heat and light, into every tree, into every shrub and flower, into every stone, ordinary as well as precious, so that each single object draws its ration from this common inflow; but the sun does not split up its light and heat, giving part to this object and part to that. It is much the same with the sun of heaven, which radiates Divine love as heat and Divine wisdom as light. These two flow into human minds, just as the heat and light of the sun of the world flow into human bodies, giving them life depending on the nature of their form; the form of each takes from the common inflow what it needs. The following saying of the Lord can be applied to this:

Your Father makes His sun rise upon the wicked and the good, and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous, Matthew 5:45.

[3] Also, the Lord is omnipresent, and where He is present, there He is with His whole essence. It is impossible for Him to take anything away from that essence, so as to give a part to one and another part to another, but He gives it in its entirety, enabling a person to take a little or much. He says too that He has His dwelling with those who keep His commandments, and that the faithful are in Him and He is in them. In short, everything is full of God, and from that fulness each takes his own share. Everything held in common is like this, for instance, the atmospheres or the oceans. The atmosphere is the same on the smallest as it is on the largest scale. It does not assign a part of itself to a person's breathing, to a bird's flying, or to the sails of a ship, or the sails of a wind-mill; but each takes from it its own portion and uses for itself as much as is enough. It is also similar with a granary full of wheat; the owner each day takes from it his own rations, and it is not the granary that distributes them.

10412. 'And Aaron made a proclamation and said, Tomorrow there will be a feast to Jehovah' means that this is the really essential thing of the Church which is to be celebrated and the truly Divine reality that is to be worshipped unceasingly. This is clear from the meaning of 'a feast' as the inclusion of celebration within the Church's worship, for feast days were times of celebration, so that 'proclaiming a feast' means the essential thing of the Church which is to be celebrated - the Divine essential reality that is to be worshipped being meant by the declaration that this feast was called 'a feast to Jehovah'; and from the meaning of 'tomorrow' as that which is eternal and unceasing, dealt with in 3998, 7140, 9939.

[2] Those furthermore whose interest lies in external things and not in what is internal wish to be worshipped as a god and to have what is theirs venerated as something Divine, so far as their fear of the common people will let them. From this one may deduce that at heart they refuse to recognize the Divine and are constantly yearning to rise to higher positions, and so far as nothing stands in their way to the highest, and so finally to the throne of God, as is plainly evident from those meant in the Word by Babel, who take all power in heaven and on earth away from the Lord and ascribe it to themselves. For they open heaven and close it just as they please. The fact that this is what they are like is clear in Isaiah,

You will declare this parable about the king of Babel, Hell beneath has been stirred up on account of you. How have you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer? You have been cut down to the earth, you have been weakened below the nations. And you said in your heart, I will go up the heavens, above the stars of God I will raise my throne, and I will sit on the mount of assembly; I will go up above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High. But yet you have been sent down to hell. Isaiah 14:4, 9, 12-15.

[3] Also the king of Babel commanded that he should be worshipped as a god, as is clear in Daniel 6. 'Babel' is used to mean those who are outwardly holy but inwardly unholy, thus those who employ the holy things of the Church as means to the end that they themselves may be worshipped as gods. This also is what all those people do who by using the holy things of the Church as the means strive to rise to eminent positions over others and greater wealthiness than others as ends in themselves. Such people are just the same in the next life. There as well they refuse at heart to recognize the Divine and endeavour by means of unmentionable tricks to make themselves gods. They place themselves high up on mountains, proclaiming and adoring one of their number as a god. But when they engage in that unholy worship the mountain splits apart to reveal a deep chasm which swallows them up, and in this way they are thrown down into hell. I have been allowed several times to see that this is so.