17. All my experience in heaven bears witness to the fact that the divine nature that comes from the Lord, affects angels, and constitutes heaven, is love. In fact, all the people there are forms of love and thoughtfulness. They look indescribably beautiful. Love radiates from their faces, from their speech, from every detail of their behavior. ¹

Further, there are surrounding auras of spiritual life that emanate from every angel and from every spirit and envelop them. By means of these auras one can recognize even from a distance the quality of the affections of their loves, since these auras flow out from the life of their affection and consequent thought - that is, from the life of their love and consequent faith. The auras that emanate from angels are so full of love that they touch the deepest reaches of life of the people they meet. I have been aware of them a number of times, and they have moved me deeply. ²

I have been able to see that love was the source of angels' life because all the people in the other life turn in a direction determined by their own love. People engaged in a love for the Lord and a love for their neighbor are constantly turning toward the Lord, while people who are engaged in self-love are constantly turning their backs to the Lord. This holds true no matter which way they turn, since in the other life spatial relationships are determined by people's inner natures. These also determine geographical regions, whose boundaries are not drawn the way they are in the physical world but depend on which way people are facing. Actually, it is not angels who turn to the Lord but the Lord who turns toward himself the people who love to do whatever has its source in him. ³ , But there will be more on this subject below, when we discuss geographical regions in the other life.

Footnotes:

What are spheres? God is Love Itself and Wisdom Itself. There are two universal spheres that flow from God to take care of the universe He created and all that is in it. They are the sphere of creating more life and the sphere of protecting what is created. See Conjugial Love 386 for a wonderful explanation of this.

We are created in the image and likeness of God, so we too have spheres that flow out of each of us and surround us. Our spheres come from the love and truth in our hearts and minds and flow out and influence others.

In this life, we can become conscious of the spheres that emanate outwardly from other people. This can be a general sphere of love or dislike, wisdom or the lack that we perceive and that either attracts us to them or repels us. This can also be a particular sphere at a certain time, such as a sphere of sadness over loss, or tension from anxiety, etc.

Feeling the spheres of others can be a protection when we perceive someone means us ill or an inspiration when someone acts with caring and kindness that we would emulate.

In the spiritual world, with the loss of physical body intervening, our perceptions of the spheres of others become enhanced. In fact, angels are capable of recognizing the true state of a person from their spheres as soon as they encounter them. So in heaven the sphere of good loves attracts other angels and joins them together. In hell the sphere of evil attracts other hellish spirits who love the same evil. See Arcana Celestia 6206:1-2 for more about this.

Our loves determine our spheres and our spheres attract those with similar loves and repel those with opposite loves. In a way we could say that our spheres are the glue that builds communities and holds them together.

(References: Divine Love and Wisdom 291; Heaven and Hell 17)