acknowledge God and worship him with acts of devotion. After death we
will become angels of the lowest heaven.
If we do not acknowledge God and do not worship him with acts of
devotion, we divest ourselves of the image of God and become like one
type of animal or another, except for the fact that we still enjoy the abil-
ity to understand and therefore to speak. If under those circumstances we
close our highest earthly level, which corresponds to the highest heavenly
level, we become like farm animals in what we love. If we close our mid-
dle earthly level, which corresponds to the middle spiritual level, we
become like foxes in what we love, and like birds that come out in the
evening, as far as our intellectual discernment goes. If we close even our
lowest earthly level to its spiritual counterpart, we become like wild ani-
mals in what we love and like fish in our understanding of truth.
[ 3 ] Divine life flows in from the sun of the angelic heaven and ener-
gizes us much the way light from our sun flows into a transparent object.
Our highest level receives life the way light flows into a diamond; our
second level receives life the way light flows into a crystal; our lowest level
receives life the way light flows into translucent glass or parchment.
If the lowest degree is totally closed spiritually, as happens when we
deny the existence of God and worship Satan, life flows into us from
God much the way light flows into opaque things on earth: rotten wood,
swamp sod, dung, and so on. At that stage we become spiritual cadavers.35 To these points I will add the following memorable occurrence.
At one point I was struck with amazement at the vast number of peo-
ple who attribute creation—everything under the sun and everything
beyond it as well—to nature. No matter what they see, they say with
heartfelt conviction, “Surely this is nature’s doing.”
I have asked them why they say nature is responsible for everything,
and why not God, especially since they repeatedly use the common
expression, “God created nature,” and therefore could as easily say that
God, rather than nature, is responsible for what they see. Beneath their
breath, in an almost inaudible voice, they reply, “What God is there
except nature?”
Their conviction that the universe was created by nature—an insan-
ity that seems like wisdom to them—makes them all feel so glorious that
they look down on all who acknowledge that the universe was created by