20. Anyone who has learned about God's order can also understand that man was created so as to become an angel, because in him order reaches its ultimate stage (see 9 above). In this stage something of the wisdom of heaven and the angels can be formed, and it can be reconstituted and multiplied. God's order never stops half-way, and forms anything there without the ultimate stage; for it is not in its fullness and perfection unless it goes to the ultimate. But when it is there, then it takes shape and uses the means at its disposal there to reconstitute and extend itself, which it does by reproduction. The ultimate is therefore the seed-bed of heaven.

This too is what is meant by the description of man and his creation in the first chapter of Genesis:

God said, Let us make ¹ man in our image, according to our likeness. And God created man in His image, in the image of God did He create him. Male and female He created them; and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Genesis 1:26-28.

Creating in the image of God and in the likeness of God means conferring on him the whole of God's order from first to last, and so making him an angel as regards the interiors of his mind.

Footnotes:

1389. Souls who have entered the next life have been amazed that such a communication of another person's thoughts should exist, and that people should know in an instant not only the nature of another person's turn of mind but also the nature of his faith. They have been told however that, once separated from the body, the spirit acquires far more excellent capabilities. During his lifetime the objects of the senses are flowing in, and also delusions arising from those things which as a consequence are fixed in the memory, in addition to anxieties over the future, various desires aroused by things of an external nature, concern about food, clothing, shelter, children, and many other matters, to which they give no thought at all in the next life. When those obstacles and hindrances have therefore been removed along with bodily things that are part of mere physical sensation, people enter inevitably into a more perfect state. The same capabilities remain, but these are far more perfect, clear, and unrestricted. This is especially so with those who have lived in charity and faith in the Lord, and also in innocence. Their capabilities are heightened enormously, way above those they had had during their lifetime, till at length they come up to the angelic capabilities of the third heaven.