Divine things, is like thinking from the thick darkness of night about
those things that appear only in the light of day. From this comes
naturalism. But he who knows how to raise his mind above ideas of thought
drawn from space and time, passes from thick darkness into light, and has
discernment in things spiritual and Divine, and finally sees the things
which are in and from what is spiritual and Divine; and then from that
light he dispels the thick darkness of the natural lumen, and banishes
its fallacies from the middle to the sides. Every man who has
understanding is able to transcend in thought these properties of nature,
and actually does so; and he then affirms and sees that the Divine,
because omnipresent, is not in space. He is also able to affirm and to
see the things that have been adduced above. But if he denies the Divine
Omnipresence, and ascribes all things to nature, then he has no wish to
be elevated, though he can be.

70. All who die and become angels put off the two above- mentioned
properties of nature, namely, space and time; for they then enter into
spiritual light, in which objects of thought are truths, and objects of
sight are like those in the natural world, but are correspondent to their
thoughts. The objects of their thought which, as just said, are truths,
derive nothing at all from space and time; and though the objects of
their sight appear as if in space and in time, still the angels do not
think from space and time. The reason is, that spaces and times there
are not fixed, as in the natural world, but are changeable according to
the states of their life. In the ideas of their thought, therefore,
instead of space and time there are states of life, instead of spaces
such things as have reference to states of love, and instead of times
such things as have reference to states of wisdom. From this it is that
spiritual thought, and spiritual speech therefrom, differ so much from
natural thought and natural speech therefrom, as to have nothing in