252. Those who talk with the angels of heaven also see the things that are in heaven, because they are then seeing from the light of heaven, in which light their interiors are. Also the angels through them see the things that are on the earth,# because with them heaven is conjoined to the world and the world is conjoined to heaven. For as has been said above (n. 246), when angels turn themselves to man they so conjoin themselves to him that they hardly know otherwise than that the things pertaining to the man are their own-those pertaining to his speech as well as those of sight and hearing; while man, on the other hand, has no other thought than that the things that flow in through the angels are his. In such a conjunction with angels of heaven were the most ancient people on this earth, and for this reason their times were called the Golden Age. Because they acknowledged the Divine under a human form, that is, the Lord, they talked with the angels of heaven as with their friends; and angels of heaven on their part talked with them as with their friends, and in them heaven and the world made one. But after those times man gradually separated himself from heaven by loving himself more than the Lord and the world more than heaven. In consequence, he began to feel the delights of the love of self and the world as separate from the delights of heaven, and finally to such an extent as to be ignorant of any other delight. Then his interiors that had been open into heaven were closed up, while his exteriors were open to the world. When this takes place man is in light in regard to all things of the world, but in thick darkness in regard to all things of heaven. # Spirits are unable to see, through man, any thing that is in this solar world, but they have seen through my eyes; the reason (n. 1880).