I had a conversation with angels about the question whether they obtain anything of life, or whether all things to the very least that the Lord works in earthly humans, [newly arrived] souls, spirits and angels are nothing but preparations for life. That they can never obtain life as their own, is an established truth. That they are only instruments or substances instrumental to life, or vessels of life, is also a truth. So it is also a truth that they are only being prepared for receiving life, not for possessing it. By a spiritual mental image, the preparation was then pictured by forms of receiving, which depictions cannot come down into a human mental image while one is in the body.