§251 how angels talk with us 129
b. The forehead corresponds to heavenly love, and therefore means that love in the Word: 9936.
The face corresponds to our deeper levels, which have to do with thought and affection: 1568 ,
2988 , 2989 , 3631 , 4796 , 4797 , 4800 , 5165 , 5168 , 5695 , 9306. So too, the face is formed to be respon-
sive to our more inward natures: 4791 – 4805 , 5695. So the face in the Word means our deeper
natures: 1999 , 2434 , 3527 , 4066 , 4796.
matter what spirit they hear, they believe it is the Holy Spirit, even though
the spirits they hear are fanatical. Spirits like this see false things as true;
and because they see them as true they convince themselves and also con-
vince the people into whom they fl ow. Further, since spirits like this who
command obedience have also begun to urge people to do evil things,
they have gradually been moved away. Fanatical spirits can be differenti-
ated from other spirits by the fact that they believe they are the Holy
Spirit and that what they are saying is divine. They do not harm those
[into whom they fl ow], because those people offer them divine worship.
I have talked with them on occasion and the unspeakable things they
instill into their worshipers have come to light. They live all together
toward the left, in a desert area.
Conversation with angels is not granted, though, except to people 250
who are focused on truths that fl ow from good intent, especially peo-
ple who acknowledge the Lord and the divine nature within his human
nature, because this is the truth in which heaven exists. For as already
noted, the Lord is heaven’s God (§§ 2 – 6 ); the Lord’s divine nature makes
heaven (§§ 7 – 12 ); the Lord’s divine nature in heaven is love for him and
thoughtfulness from him toward one’s neighbor (§§ 13 – 19 ); and the
whole heaven, grasped as a single entity, refl ects a single individual, as
does each community of heaven; and each individual angel has a perfect
human form because of the Lord’s divine human nature (§§ 59 – 86 ). We
can see from this that conversation with angels is not granted except to
people whose deeper levels have been opened by divine truths all the way
to the Lord, since it is into these that the Lord fl ows within us, and when
the Lord fl ows in, so does heaven.
The reason divine truths open our deeper levels is that we have been
so created that our inner person is an image of heaven and our outer an
image of the world (§ 57 ); and our inner person is opened only by the
divine truth that emanates from the Lord, because this is the light and
the life of heaven (§§ 126 – 140 ).
The infl ow of the Lord himself into us is into the forehead and from 251
there into the whole face.b The infl ow of the spiritual angels who are
with us is into our head overall, from the forehead and temples to the