302. I have talked with angels about the conjunction of heaven with the human race, and I said that, while the man of the Church declares that all good is from God, and that angels are with man, yet few believe that angels are conjoined to man, still less that they are in his thought and affection. To this the angels replied that they know that there is such a belief and even such a mode of speaking in the world, and especially, to their surprise, within the Church, where yet there is the Word to teach men about heaven and its conjunction with man. Nevertheless, there is such a conjunction that man is unable to think the least thing apart from the spirits adjoined to him, and on this his spiritual life depends. They said that the cause of ignorance of this matter is man's belief that he lives from himself, without a connection with the First Being (Esse) of life; and that he does not know that this connection exists by means of the heavens; and yet if that connection were broken man would instantly fall down dead. If man believed, as is really true, that all good is from the Lord and all evil from hell, he would not make the good in him a matter of merit nor would evil be imputed to him; for he would then look to the Lord in all the good he thinks and does, and all the evil that inflows would be cast down to hell whence it comes. But because man does not believe that there is any influx into him either from heaven or from hell, and so supposes that all the things that he thinks and wills are in himself, and therefore from himself, he appropriates the evil to himself, and the inflowing good he defiles with merit.

9510. 'From solid gold you shall make them' means a representative sign of [that] good. This is clear from the meaning of 'gold' as the good of love, dealt with in 113, 1551, 1552, 5658, 6914. The fact that gold is not the good of love, only a representative sign of it, is self-evident. The like applies to the olive wood which the cherubs in the Jerusalem temple were made of, 1 Kings 6:23; 'olive wood' is a sign of the good of love, see 886, and so too is the oil itself, 3728, 4582, 4638.