168. When angels speak with men they never express themselves in the natural ideas proper to man, all of which are from time, space, matter and things analogous thereto, but in spiritual ideas, which are all from states and their various changes within the angels and outside them. Nevertheless, when these angelic ideas which are spiritual inflow with men, they are turned in a moment and of themselves into the natural ideas proper to man corresponding perfectly to the spiritual ideas. Neither angels nor men know that this takes place, but such is the nature of all the influx of heaven with man. There were angels who were permitted to enter more nearly into my thoughts, even into the natural thoughts in which were many things from time and space. But as they then understood nothing, they suddenly withdrew, and after they had withdrawn I heard them talking and saying that they had been in darkness. [2]It has been granted me to know, by experience, how ignorant the angels are about time. There was a certain one from heaven who was able to enter into natural ideas, such as man has, and with him I afterwards talked as man with man. At first he did not know what it was that I called time, and I was therefore obliged to tell him all about it, how the sun appears to be carried round our earth, and to produce years and days, and how years are thereby divided into four seasons, into months and weeks, and how days are divided into twenty-four hours, and that these times recur by fixed alternations, all this being the source of times. On hearing this, he was surprised, saying that he knew nothing about such things, but only what states are. [3] In speaking with him, I also said that it is known in the world, for men speak as if they knew, that there is no time in heaven, saying of those who die that they leave the things of time and that they pass out of time, meaning by this, out of the world. I also said that some know that times in their origin are states, for they know that times are entirely in accordance with the states of the affections in which they are, short to those who are in pleasant and joyous states, long to those who are in unpleasant and sorrowful states, and various in a state of hope and expectation. This leads learned men to enquire what time and space are, and some of them know that time belongs to the natural man.