242. On the point that the angels receive all their wisdom from the Word, they themselves assert this. They have as much light as they have understanding of the Word. Heaven's light is divine wisdom; before angels' eyes this divine wisdom takes the form of light.

In the sanctuaries where their copies of the Word are kept, the light is fiery or shining white. There is more light in such places than anywhere else in heaven.

The wisdom of heavenly angels goes almost as far beyond the wisdom of spiritual angels as the wisdom of spiritual angels goes beyond our human wisdom. The reason for this is that heavenly angels have a love from the Lord for what is good, while spiritual angels have wisdom from the Lord about what is true. Where love for what is good exists, there dwells wisdom also. Where truths exist, there dwells only as much wisdom as there is love for what is good. This is why the Word is written one way in the Lord's heavenly kingdom and another in his spiritual kingdom. The heavenly kingdoms form of the Word expresses loving forms of goodness in letters and conveys the specific types of love with diacritical marks. The spiritual kingdoms form of the Word expresses truths of wisdom in letters and conveys inner perceptions of truth with diacritical marks.

From all this you can imagine what kind of wisdom lies hidden in the Word that we have in this world. Inside it there lies all angelic wisdom, which is inexpressible. If we are made angels by the Lord through the Word, we will come into that wisdom after death.

360. In the preceding sections, I stated that our faith starts out as something earthly, but as we move toward the Lord it becomes spiritual; and the same applies to our goodwill. No one yet knows the difference, however, between earthly and spiritual faith and goodwill. This great mystery needs to be disclosed.

There are two worlds, the physical world and the spiritual world. Each world has a sun. From each sun emanates heat and light. The heat and light from the sun of the spiritual world have an intrinsic life in them from the Lord, who is within that sun. The heat and light from the sun of the physical world, on the other hand, have no intrinsic life in them. Instead they serve as vessels for the two higher forms of heat and light (as instrumental causes usually do for their principal causes) and serve to convey that higher heat and light to people.

It is important to realize, therefore, that the heat and light from the sun in the spiritual world are the source of all that is spiritual. That heat and that light are themselves spiritual as well, because they have spirit and life within them. The heat and light from the sun in the physical world are the source of all physical things. Physical things in and of themselves have no spirit or life.

[2] Now, since faith relates to light and goodwill to heat, clearly if we are in the light and heat that emanate from the sun of the spiritual world, we have a faith and a goodwill that are spiritual. If we are limited to the heat and light that emanate from the sun of the physical world, we are limited to a faith and a goodwill that are earthly.

As spiritual light lies within physical light as if it was in its own vessel or container, and spiritual heat lies within physical heat in the same way, it follows that spiritual faith lies within earthly faith, and spiritual goodwill within earthly goodwill. The two come together with every step we take as we progress from the physical world into the spiritual world. We make this progress as we believe in the Lord, who is the light itself, the way, the truth, and the life, as he himself teaches.

[3] Since this is the case, when we have spiritual faith we clearly also have earthly faith, in that spiritual faith lies within earthly faith, as I just said. And because faith relates to light, it follows that when spiritual faith comes into us our earthly self becomes translucent, so to speak. Our earthly self also becomes beautifully colored, depending on how united our faith is to goodwill. The reason it takes on colors is that goodwill is a glowing red and faith is a shining white. Goodwill glows red with the flame of spiritual fire, and faith shines white with the brilliance of the light from that fire.

Just the opposite happens, however, if we do not have spirituality in our earthly self, but instead have something earthly in our spirituality. This is what happens to people who reject faith and goodwill. For these people, the inner level of the mind, where they go when they are left to their own thinking, is hellish. In fact, although they do not realize it, their thinking comes from hell. The outer level of their mind, from which they operate when they are talking to their friends in the world, may be spiritual in a way, but it is also riddled with things that are like the filthiness of hell. These people are in fact in hell, in the sense that they are in a state that is upside-down compared to the state of the people we were talking about before.