Divine Love and Wisdom (Ager) n. 243

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243. That the understanding can be raised into the light of heaven, that is, into angelic wisdom, while the will cannot be raised into the heat of heaven, that is, into angelic love, unless man flees from evils as sins and looks to the Lord, has been made plainly evident to me from experience in the spiritual world. I have frequently seen and perceived that simple spirits, who knew merely that God is and that the Lord was born a man, and who knew scarcely anything else, clearly apprehended the arcana of angelic wisdom almost as the angels do; and not these simple ones alone, but many also of the infernal crew. These, while they listened, understood, but not when they thought within themselves; for while they listened, light entered from above, and when they thought within themselves, no light could enter except that which corresponded to their heat or love; consequently when they had listened to and perceived these arcana, as soon as they turned their ears away they remembered nothing, those belonging to the infernal crew even rejecting these things with disgust and utterly denying them, because the fire of their love and its light, being delusive, induced darkness, by which the heavenly light entering from above was extinguished.


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