243. It has been made clearly evident to me from experience in the spiritual world that the understanding can be elevated into the light of heaven, that is, into angelic wisdom, and that man s will cannot be raised into the heat of heaven, that is, into angelic love, unless he shuns evils as sins and looks to the Lord. Many times I have seen and perceived that spirits who knew merely that God is, and that the Lord was born a Man, but scarcely knew anything else, understood the arcana of angelic wisdom, almost as angels do; but not only these simple spirits, but also many of the infernal crew. They understood when they heard, but not when they thought within themselves. For when they heard, light entered from above, but when they thought within themselves, no other light could enter except that which corresponded to their heat or love. And therefore after they heard these arcana and perceived them, whenever they turned their ears away, they remembered nothing. Indeed those who were of the infernal crew then rejected those things with disgust and completely denied them. The reason for this was that the fire of their love and its light, being fatuous, induced darkness by which the heavenly light entering from above was extinguished.