the result. No matter how developed the result becomes, it cannot take the
place of the means to itself; nor can these means take the place of the pur-
pose behind them.
Take the three levels of atmospheres as another illustration. The aura
is supreme, the ether is below it, and the air is under the ether. No type
of air can ever have such high quality that it becomes a type of ether, nor
can any type of ether ever have such high quality that it becomes a type
of aura. Yet the qualities of each of these atmospheres can be developed
and improved to infinity.
As for examples that become visible in spiritual light, the earthly type
of love an animal has cannot have such a high quality that it becomes the
spiritual love that creation has endowed us with. Likewise an animal’s
earthly intelligence cannot have such a high quality that it becomes
human, spiritual intelligence. Because these last points are not yet known,
they will be explained elsewhere [§§ 48 : 8 – 15 ; 335 ].
From all the above examples you can see that features that are univer-
sal to our world are everlasting tokens of God the Creator’s infinity. As
for the way specific things imitate those universal features, however, and
reflect the infinity of God, this is an abyss; it is an ocean the human
mind can navigate, as long as it remains watchful for storms arising from
the earthly self that would sink the ship—masts, sails, and all—starting
with the helm where the earthly self stands confident.33 6. Every created thing is finite. The Infinite is in finite objects the way
something is present in a vessel that receives it; the Infinite is in people the
way something is present in an image of itself.Every created thing is finite
because Jehovah God [created] all things through the sun of the spiritual
world, which most closely surrounds him. That sun is made of a sub-
stance that went out from him, the essence of which is love. The uni-
verse from beginning to end was created from that sun through its heat
and light. This is not the place, however, to lay out the steps of creation
in sequence. A rough outline of them will be presented in sections to
come [§§ 76 , 78 ]. The only point relevant to the current discussion is
that things were formed from what went before. As a result, levels were
created—three levels in the spiritual world; three corresponding levels in
the physical world; and the same number for the inert substances that
make up the lands and waters of the world. Information on the origin
and nature of those levels was published in Angelic Wisdom about Divine
Love and Wisdom(Amsterdam 1763 ). It was fully laid out in the little
work Soul-Body Interaction (published in London, 1769 ). Because of
these levels, all things that came later were vessels for earlier things.