Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 1628

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1628. All angels have their own dwellings in the places where they are, and these are magnificent. I have been to those places; I have seen them frequently, and have been astonished; and I have talked to those there. They stand out so clearly and distinctly that nothing can be more clear and distinct. Dwellings on earth scarcely stand any comparison with them whatever. The angels go so far as to declare that dwelling places on earth are dead and unreal, whereas their own are alive and true because they come from the Lord. Their architecture is such as to be the source of the art of architecture; and it is endlessly varied. They have said that if they were offered all the palaces existing in the whole world they would not exchange them for their own. So far as they are concerned, what is made of stone, clay, or wood is dead, whereas what derives from the Lord, and from life itself and light itself, is alive - the more so since they experience them with all of their senses. For what exists there is utterly appropriate to the senses of spirits and angels, while what is illuminated by the physical sun they cannot see at all with their own sight. Things made of stone and wood however are appropriate to the senses men possess while they live in the physical body. Spiritual things go with spiritual, and physical with physical.


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