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:

7078. It should be recognized that spirits belonging to other planets do not appear within the sphere where spirits belonging to our planet are but outside, some quite a distance away, others less far, and also in different directions. One reason for this is that the spirits belonging to one planet do not have the same disposition and life as spirits belonging to another; and another reason is that they constitute different provinces in the Grand Man. Unlikeness in their states of life is responsible for this appearance of separateness; but in the inmost heaven they do not appear separated from one another. The spirits belonging to Mercury however do not appear in any particular direction or at any particular distance but are seen at one time in a forward position, at another over on the left, or at another slightly behind the back. The reason for this is that they are allowed to wander everywhere to acquire items of knowledge and thereby enrich their memory. Their planet is presented to spirits as being behind the back, in the same way as the sun of the world is when they think about it; for nothing at all of it is visible. The reason why it is presented behind the back is that to those who are in the next life the sun of the world is in complete obscurity and is itself thick darkness, whereas the sun of heaven, which is the Lord, appears in front, before the right eye, because it is the source of all the light they have. For the right eye corresponds to the ability to see with the understanding not only in the measure that the understanding is enlightened by truth but also in the measure that it is [affected] by good, 4410, so that the Lord views a person [with the eye of] good, and enlightens him by means of good.