1. The natural mind can be elevated up to the light of heaven in which angels dwell, and can perceive naturally, thus not so fully, what angels perceive spiritually. But the mind of the natural person still cannot be elevated into angelic light itself. [2] 2. By elevating his natural mind to the light of heaven a person can think, even speak, with angels, but the angels' thought and speech then flow into the person's natural thought and speech, and not the reverse. Consequently angels speak with a person in the natural language which is the person's native tongue. [3] 3. This takes place by a spiritual influx into natural light, and not by any natural influx into spiritual light. [4] 4. Human wisdom, which is natural so long as a person lives in the natural world, can in no measure be elevated into angelic wisdom, but can be elevated only into a kind of image of it. The reason is that the elevation of the natural mind takes place by a continuous ascent, like the progression from dark to light or from cruder to purer. But still the person in whom the spiritual degree has been opened comes into that wisdom when he dies, and he may also come into it as the result of a suspension of his bodily sensations and an influx then from above into the spiritual elements of his mind. [5] 5. A person's natural mind consists of spiritual substances and at the same time of natural substances. It is owing to its spiritual substances that thought occurs, and not because of the natural substances. These latter substances are left behind when a person dies, but not the spiritual substances. Consequently, after death, when the person becomes a spirit or angel, that same mind remains, having the same form that it had in the world. [6] 6. The natural substances of that mind-which, as we said, are by death left behind-form an epidermal envelope encompassing the spiritual body that spirits and angels have. It is in consequence of such an envelope, taken from the natural world, that their spiritual bodies have permanent existence, for the natural element is the outmost containing vessel. That is why there is no spirit or angel who was not first born a person in the world. We present these secrets of angelic wisdom here in order to make known the nature of the natural mind in a person, a subject that we take up again in further detail in subsequent discussions.