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.

Voetnoten:

5377. CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GRAND MAN - continued. IN THIS SECTION, TOO, THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS WITH IT

The subject at the end of the previous chapter was the correspondence of certain internal organs of the body with the Grand Man, that is to say, the correspondence of the liver, pancreas, stomach, and certain other organs with it. In this present section the same subject moves on to the correspondence of the peritoneum, kidneys, ureters, bladder, and also the intestines with it. Whatever exists in the human being, both in the external man and in the internal man, has a correspondence with the Grand Man. Without that correspondence with the Grand Man - that is, with heaven, or what amounts to the same, with the spiritual world - nothing can ever come into being and remain in being. This is because it does not have a connection with anything prior to itself or consequently with Him who is the First, that is, with the Lord. Nothing that lacks such a connection, thus that is independent, can remain in being for even a single instant. For everything that remains in being does so entirely by virtue of its connection with and dependence on what brings it into being; for remaining in being consists in a constant coming into being.

[2] From this it follows that not only all the individual parts of the human being correspond to the Grand Man but also every single thing in the universe. The sun has a correspondence, and so does the moon; for in heaven the Lord is the Sun, and the Moon too. The fire and heat of the sun, as well as its light, have a correspondence, for it is the Lord's love towards the whole human race that its fire and heat correspond to, and His Divine truth that its light corresponds to. The stars too have a correspondence, the communities of heaven and their dwelling-places being what the stars correspond to. Not that the heavenly communities dwell in the stars, but that they have been set in order in the same kind of way as the stars. Everything under the sun has a correspondence - every single thing beneath it in the animal kingdom and every single thing beneath it in the vegetable kingdom. And unless the spiritual world were flowing into them all, every one, they would instantly break down and fall to pieces.

[3] Considerable experience too has made me aware of all this, for I have been shown what very many things in the animal kingdom, and still more in the vegetable kingdom, correspond to in the spiritual world, as well as the fact that without the inflow of the spiritual world into them they cannot by any means at all remain in being. For once what is prior has been taken away what is posterior of necessity perishes, and likewise once what is prior has been severed from what is posterior. Since correspondence is primarily the correspondence of the human being with heaven, and through heaven with the Lord, the specific nature of each person's correspondence therefore determines what he looks like in the next life in the light of heaven. This explains why angels have an indescribably bright and beautiful appearance, whereas those in hell have an unspeakably dark and ugly one.