Nevertheless, when these angelic ideas, which are
spiritual, flow into men, they are turned in a moment and of
themselves into natural ideas proper to man, that correspond
perfectly to the spiritual ideas. Neither angels nor men know that
this takes place; but such is all influx of heaven into man. Certain
angels were permitted to enter more nearly into my thoughts, even
into the natural thoughts in which there were many things from time
and space; but as they then understood nothing they suddenly
withdrew; and after they had withdrawn I heard them talking, and
saying that they had been in darkness. [2] It has been granted me to
know by experience how ignorant the angels are about time. There was
a certain one from heaven who was able to enter into natural ideas,
such as man has; and after he had done this I talked with him as man
with man. At first he did not know what it was that I called time,
and I was therefore obliged to tell him all about it, how the sun
appears to be carried about our earth, and to produce years and days,
and how years are thereby divided into four seasons, and also into
months and weeks, and days into twenty-four hours; and how these
times recur by fixed alternations, and how this is the source of
times.
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