[2] With regard to revelations resulting either from perception or from talking to angels through whom the Lord speaks, it should be recognized that people who are governed by good and from this by truth, especially those who are governed by good flowing from love to the Lord, receive revelation as a result of perception. But those who are not governed by good or from this by truth can indeed receive revelations, but not those that are the result of perception, only those which come to them through a voice which they hear speaking within themselves and so through angels from the Lord. This kind of revelation is external, whereas the other kind is internal. Revelation resulting from perception is the kind that angels, especially celestial ones, receive. It was also the kind received by members of the Most Ancient Church, and by some members of the Ancient Church too; but scarcely anyone receives such at the present day. Very many people however, including those who have not been governed by good, have received revelations from conversations [with angels] which did not involve any perception, the same as with those receiving revelations through visions or through dreams.

[3] Most of the revelations received by the prophets in the Jewish Church were of this kind - they heard a voice, saw a vision, or dreamed a dream. But because they had no perception these were merely verbal or visual revelations which did not involve any perception about what was really meant by them. For genuine perception comes from the Lord through heaven; it fills the understanding with spiritual ideas and leads it, as may be perceived, to think along the lines of, and inwardly to recognize, the true nature of a thing. The source of that power of recognition is not known, but the understanding imagines that it begins within itself and springs from the interconnected ideas it has present within itself. But in fact that power is a dictate coming from the Lord by way of heaven into the interior parts of ones thought regarding the things that are above and beyond the natural and the senses, that is, the kinds of things that belong to the spiritual world or heaven. From all this one may see what revelation resulting from perception is. But the revelation resulting from perception which the Lord, who is represented here by 'Joseph', had - which revelation is the subject here in the internal sense - sprang from the Divine within Himself, and so originated in Himself.