328. With that we then departed, and [as we went] we spoke again on the same subject. And I said, "These differences we have being talking about spring solely from the fact that you who are in the spiritual world and are thus spiritual have your existence in essential things and not material ones, essential things being the germs of material ones. You have your existence in primitives and thus in elemental things, but we in derivatives and composite things. You have your existence in the particulars of things, but we in the generalities of things. And as generalities cannot enter into particulars, so neither can natural things which are material in nature enter into spiritual ones which are essential in nature - just as a sailor's rope cannot enter or be drawn through they eye of a sewing needle, or as a sinew cannot enter or be inserted into one of the fibers of which it consists, nor a fiber into one of the fibrils of which it consists. This, too, is known in the world, which is why we have a consensus among the learned that there is no influx of anything natural into something spiritual, but only of something spiritual into something natural. "This now is the reason a natural person cannot think the same thoughts as a spiritual person, and so neither express them in speech. Consequently Paul calls the words he heard from the third heaven inexpressible.* [2] "Furthermore, to think spiritually is to think apart from time and space, whereas to think naturally is to think in terms of time and space. For to every idea of natural thought there clings some element derived from time and space, but not to any idea of spiritual thought. The reason is that the spiritual world does not exist in time and space, as the natural world does, but it exists in an appearance of these two. Our thoughts and perceptions differ in this respect as well. Therefore you can think of God's essence and omnipresence from eternity, that is to say, of God before the creation of the world, since you think of God's essence from eternity apart from time and of His omnipresence apart from space; and in so doing you comprehend matters which transcend the ideas of a natural person." [3] I then went on to tell them how I was once thinking of God's essence and omnipresence from eternity, that is, of God before the creation of the world; and because I was unable as yet to remove notions of space and time from the ideas in my thought, I became distressed, for instead of God there entered the idea of nature. But I was told: "Remove ideas of space and time and you will see." It was then granted me to remove them, and I did see. From that time on I have been able to think of God from eternity, and not at all of nature from eternity, because God is in all time apart from time, and in all space apart from space, whereas nature is in all time within time, and in all space within space. Thus nature with its time and space could not help but have a beginning and point of origin, but not God, who is apart from time and space. Therefore nature is from God, not from eternity but in time, that is to say, it is from God simultaneously with time and at the same time space. * 2 Corinthians 12:1-4.