3226. Though he is not aware of it, one of the abilities which are present in a person, and which are taken by him into the next life when he passes into that life on his being released from the body, is the ability to perceive what is meant by the representatives that are seen in the next life. He is also able intuitively (sensu animi) to express fully within an instant that which he was unable to do during his lifetime even if he spent hours over it. He does this by means of ideas gained from the things that belong to the light of heaven; and those ideas are strengthened, being so to speak equipped with wings, by the addition of visual images representative of the subject under discussion, images such as defy description. And since everyone enters into those abilities after death and does not need to be taught them in the next life, it may therefore be recognized that everyone possesses those things, that is, that those abilities exist within him during his lifetime even though he is not aware of this. The reason this is so is that with everyone the Lord is flowing in constantly by way of heaven. That influx is an influx of spiritual and celestial things which come down into his natural ideas and there manifest themselves in a representative manner. With angels in heaven their thoughts are fixed solely on celestial and spiritual things which belong to the Lord's kingdom, whereas with man in the world his thoughts are fixed on scarcely anything other than the bodily and natural things that constitute the kingdom in which he dwells and the necessities of life which he requires. And since the spiritual and celestial things of heaven that flow in manifest themselves in a representative manner in man's natural ideas they therefore remain ingrafted and exist with a person when he casts off bodily things and leaves behind worldly things.