Divine Love and Wisdom (Rogers) n. 291

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291. Among the points shown in Part Two is this one as well, that the sun of the spiritual world is not the Lord. Rather we showed that it is an emanation of His Divine love and wisdom. We call it an emanation because that sun was produced by Divine love and wisdom, which in themselves are substance and form, and the Divine emanates by means of it. However, because human reason is such that it does not assent to something unless it sees it from its cause, thus unless it perceives how it is possible-in the present instance how the sun of the spiritual world, which is not the Lord but an emanation from Him, was produced-therefore we will say something about this, too. I have had many conversations with angels on this point, and they have said that they perceive it clearly in their spiritual light, but that they can present it only with difficulty to a person in his natural light, there being such a great difference between the one light and the other and consequently between their thoughts. [2] Nevertheless, they have said that the case is similar to that with the atmosphere of affections and consequent thoughts which encompasses every angel, by which his presence is manifested to others near and far. This encompassing atmosphere is not the angel himself, they have said, but something arising from each and every part of his body, from which substances continually emanate like a stream; and the substances which emanate envelop him. Moreover, being continually activated by the two wellsprings of his life's operation, the heart and the lungs, these substances immediately enveloping his body stir the surrounding atmospheres into like activities, and in consequence of it produce in others a perception as though of his presence. Thus there is not some other atmosphere of affections and consequent thoughts which emanate and extend from him, even though it is so called, because affections are only states of the forms of the mind within. Angels have said furthermore that an angel has such an atmosphere about him because the Lord has one about Him, that the atmosphere about the Lord is in like manner from Him, and that that atmosphere is their sun, or the sun of the spiritual world.


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