2291. THAT THERE IS CONTINUALLY [continuatio for continuo, I think] [GIVEN] BY THE LORD A PREPARATION [TO RECEIVE] LIFE, AND NEVER LIFE [ITSELF]. I was in discourse with the angels concerning this, whether they receive aught of life, or whether each and all that the Lord operates in men, souls, spirits, and angels are only preparations (for receiving life); that they could never receive life as their own is a truth and confirmed; that they are only organs or organic substances of life, or vessels of life, this also life, not to possess it, this also is a truth. By a spiritual idea the preparation was thus represented, as it were, by kinds [species] of receptions [recipiendi] destitute of life, and that they are only such kinds of receptions these representations cannot fall into human idea while [man] is in the body.