155. CONCERNING THE SPEECH AND UNDERSTANDING OF THINGS WITH THE ANGELS I spoke with the spirits around me concerning the speech of angels, and their understanding of things, which the spirits were most eager to know. Having learned from experience, I said (1) that the speech of angels cannot become perceptible to us, because it contains innumerable things together, as it were, which would have to be tediously explained in succession and by many circumlocutions; and that it cannot be represented to us otherwise than by almost incomprehensible forms, variously gyrated and circumgyrated, according to the nature of the more interior forms, which I cannot describe. Concerning these forms which have been shown me, see elsewhere.* (2) There is sometimes given a form of speech, or of very many speaking together, which does not appear similar but at times entirely different, when it falls into a lower sphere, as is the case for the most part with such representations as those of the Prophets, which therefore contain heavenly and thus arcane things in their more interior sense. For the understanding of the angels is reciprocal, namely, it is from such representations which, when presented to our ideas, are translated into heavenly ones which are understood by the angels; in this way can an earthly paradise everywhere pass over into a heavenly one. (3) It was also shown me that the angels understood a series of things still more sublime and heavenly from natural things alone rightly connected. This, however, can never exist with the angels except from the mercy of God Messiah. 1747, Aug. 21, o.s. (4) By the Divine mercy of God Messiah I could sometimes livingly feel such circumgyrations above me. From this I was able to conclude that myriads of these more interior things could produce one material idea, so called, in which such innumerable things are contained that man can never believe, still less comprehend, it. It is the same as regards each more interior idea, but indefinitely more perfectly. This form, and consequently the influx from God Messiah through the angels, and from them through spirits into human minds, is disturbed when man lives in a contrary order, especially when he wants to bring himself into the mysteries of faith by means of scientifics, enkindled by the love of self and the world, and thus by cupidities; thence arises a confusion or disturbance like that of the Babylonians when they were building their tower and their lips were confounded [Genesis xi 4-9]. (5) Then God Messiah is said to be absent from man, although all things are still so disposed that they are reduced into the semblance of some heavenly form, which can be effected in an indefinite variety of ways. For however abstruse, intricate, and varied anything may be in the lower sphere, or in the sphere of the world, it can still be reduced into heavenly order by God Messiah; otherwise man would perish, and he could not understand anything whatever, for which reason there is preserved a spiritual influx in order that he may be able to reason. The door from the heavenly into the earthly paradise is said to be opened when man acts from above, that is, according to order, which is also to "turn the face". Concerning the Babylonish confusion and the opening of the heavenly Paradise. * Perhaps n. 86; or On the Worship and Love of God, Part III.