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.

6057. Before anything can be said about the influx and operation of the soul into the body, a proper knowledge is required of the truth that the internal man has been created so as to conform to an image of heaven, and the external man to an image of the world, so much so that the internal man is the smallest form heaven can take, and the external man is the smallest the world can take and is thus the microcosm. The fact that the external man is an image of the world can be seen from his external or physical senses. The ear has been made to conform to the whole nature of the modification of air, and the lungs to the whole nature of air-pressure. So too with the surface-areas of the body, which are held in shape by the pressure of air all around them. The eye has been made to conform to the whole nature of the ether and light; the tongue to the perception of particles dissolved and suspended in fluids, and at the same time along with the lungs, trachea, larynx, glottis, jaws, and lips to conform to the power of using air in varying ways to produce articulated sounds or words, and musical sounds too. The nostrils have been made to conform to the perception of particles suspended in the atmosphere, and touch, a sense which is distributed over the whole of the body, to the perception of changes in the condition of the air, that is to say, whether it is cold or hot, as well as the perception of the nature of fluids and the weights of objects. (The internal organs, which the air surrounding the body cannot enter, are held together and kept in shape by a purer kind of air, called ether.) This is not to mention all the deeply hidden aspects of the natural world that have been inscribed on and apply themselves to the body, such as all the secrets of mechanics, physics, chemistry, and optics. All this goes to prove that the entire natural order was drawn on so that the external side of the human being might be created in conformity with it, which was why the ancients named the human being the microcosm.

[2] Now just as the external man has been created so as to conform to an image of everything in the world, so the internal man has been created so as to conform to an image of everything in heaven, that is, an image of the celestial and spiritual qualities that come from the Lord, from which heaven is formed and in which it consists. The celestial qualities there are all the aspects of love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, and the spiritual qualities are all the aspects of faith. They are intrinsically so great and of such a nature that no tongue can possibly declare even a millionth of them. The truth that the internal man has been made so as to conform to an image of all those qualities is plain to see in the angels. When they appear before a person's internal sight, as they have appeared before mine, their presence alone stirs feelings to the depths of his being. For love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour pour out of them and into the onlooker; and what is radiated by that love and charity, namely rays of faith, shines out of them and stirs one's affections. This has served to show, as well as other proofs, that because the internal man has been created to be an angel, the internal man is the smallest form heaven can take.

[3] From all this it now becomes clear that within the human being the spiritual world has been joined to the natural world. As a result, in the case of the human being, the spiritual world flows into the natural world in so vital a way that a person can discern it if he merely stops to pay attention to it. This also shows what the interaction of the soul with the body is, that strictly speaking it is a communication of the spiritual realities of heaven with the natural things of the world, a communication which is effected by one flowing into the other, yet depends on the way the two have been joined together. This communication effected through an inflowing which depends on the way the two have been joined together is unknown at the present day, for the reason that every single thing is attributed to natural forces and there is no knowledge of what is spiritual, which at the present day is so remote that when people give it any thought it seems to be non-existent.