140 HEAVEN and HELL §269
d. The love that rules or governs throughout is present within us in the details of our life, so it is
present in every detail of our thought and affection: 4459 , 5949 , 6159 , 6571 , 7648 , 8067 , 8853 –
8858. Our nature is determined by our ruling love: 918 [ 917 ], 1040 , 8858 ; illustrated by examples:
8854 , 8857. Whatever rules throughout constitutes the life of our spirit: 7648. This is our essential
intent, our essential love, and the goal of our life, because what we intend is what we love, and
what we love is what we set as our goal: 1317 , 1568 , 1571 , 1909 , 3796 , 5949 , 6936. Therefore our
intent, or our ruling love, or the goal of our life, determines the kind of person we are: 1568 , 1571 ,
3570 , 4054 , 6571 , 6934 [ 6935 ], 6938 , 8856 , 10076 , 10109 , 10110 , 10284.
to the proper arrangement of things; for as already noted (§§ 236 , 241 ), they
express their affections through the sounds and the concepts derived from
their affections through the words. This is why the things that people have
heard in heaven are called ineffable.
Angels can also state completely in a few words the details that are
written in a whole volume, giving each word something that raises it
toward a deeper wisdom. Their language by nature agrees with their
affections, and every word agrees with their concepts. The words actually
vary in infi nite shadings depending on the way they express in sequence
things that are simultaneous in their thought.
[ 2 ] The more inward angels can even tell a speaker’s whole life from
the tone of voice and a few words. From the way the sound is differenti-
ated by concepts into words, they actually perceive the speaker’s ruling
love, in which, so to speak, the very details of life are engraved.d
We can see from all this what angels’ wisdom is like. Relative to our
wisdom, it is on the order of ten thousands to one. It is like the ratio
between the motor energies of the body, which are countless, to some act
that results from them, which to our senses seems like a single event. Or
it is like the thousands of things we see through a perfect microscope
compared to the one fuzzy thing we see with the naked eye.
[ 3 ] I should also like to illustrate the matter with one example. An
angel, out of his wisdom, described the process of regeneration and pre-
sented mysteries about it in their proper sequence, amounting to a hun-
dred. He fi lled out each single mystery with concepts containing even
deeper mysteries, and did this from beginning to end, explaining how
the spiritual person is conceived anew; is carried in the womb, so to
speak; is born; matures; and is gradually perfected. He said that he could
multiply the number of mysteries into the thousands, and that the things
he was talking about involved only the regeneration of the outer person.
There were countless more about the regeneration of the inner person.
This and other things of the same sort that I have heard from angels
have shown me how much wisdom they have and how much ignorance