4797. The changes that take place in the state of their affections are also clearly visible in angels' faces. When they are in their own community the face they present is their own particular one; but when they enter another community the affections for goodness and truth belonging to this other community bring a change to their faces. Yet their own true face is so to speak the basic surface, which is identifiable within all the changes that take place. I have witnessed the consecutive variations taking place in keeping with the affections of the communities with which they were communicating. For every angel is in some province of the Grand Man and so communicates generally and widely with all throughout the same province, even though he is in one part of that province to which he specifically corresponds. I have seen them bringing variations to their faces by changing from one border-line of affection to another; yet I observed that they preserved the same faces in general, so that the ruling affection shone out in every variation of them. Thus their faces displayed the full range of that entire affection.

[2] And what was quite astonishing, the changes which affections undergo from young childhood to adult life were also shown by variations in the face. I was allowed to see how much of young childhood was preserved in adult life, and that it was this that gave adult life its essentially human quality. For innocence - the external form of it - is present in a young child, and innocence constitutes that essentially human quality; indeed innocence is so to speak the basic attribute into which love and charity from the Lord can enter. When a person is being regenerated and becoming wise the innocence of infancy which has been external becomes internal. Consequently true wisdom resides in no other abode than innocence, 2305, 2306, 3183, 3994; also, no one can enter heaven except one who has some degree of innocence, according to the Lord's words,

Unless you become as young children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:3; Mark 10:15.

6431. 'The blessings of the deep lying beneath' means with factual knowledge which belongs in the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'being blessed with blessings' as being endowed with the kinds of things that derive from the spiritual world; and from the meaning of 'the deep lying beneath' as factual knowledge in the natural. The natural is called 'the deep lying beneath' when considered in relation to the interiors constituting the heaven spoken of above in 6430. And since the natural is meant by 'the deep lying beneath', so too is factual knowledge meant, for factual knowledge and its delights belong in the natural and compose its life. This is especially true of the spiritual man, for he is led through factual knowledge to truths, and through truths to good. From all this it is evident that 'being blessed with the blessings of the deep lying beneath' means being endowed in the natural with factual knowledge and so with truths. Factual knowledge that holds truths in it and that belongs in the natural is also meant by 'the deep' in the blessing of Joseph recorded in Moses,

Blessed by Jehovah is his land, in regard to the precious things of heaven, to the dew, to the deep also lying beneath. Deuteronomy 33:13.