§203 form & communication 105
c. Divine truths are the laws of the design: 2247 [ 2447 ], 7995. To the extent that we live according
to the design—to the extent, that is, that we are engaged in what divine truths tell us is good—we
are human: 4839 , 6605 , 6626. The human is the creature in which all the elements of the divine
order are brought together, and from creation we are the divine design in form: 4219 , 4220 [ 4222 ],
4223 , 4523 , 4524 , 5114 , 5368 [ 4839 ], 6013 , 6057 , 6605 , 6626 , 9706 , 10156 , 10472. We are born not
into what is good and true but into what is evil and false, into the opposite of the divine design,
that is; and this is why we are born into utter ignorance, and why it is necessary for us to be born
anew, that is, regenerated, which is accomplished by means of divine truths from the Lord, so
that we may be brought into the design: 1047 , 2307 , 2308 , 3518 , 3812 , 8480 , 8550 , 10283 , 10284 ,
10286 , 10731. When the Lord forms us anew (that is, regenerates us) he arranges everything within
us according to the design, therefore in heaven’s form: 5700 , 6690 , 9931 , 10303.
d. Everyone in heaven has a communication of life, which we can call an outreach, into the sur-
rounding angelic communities in accord with the amount and quality of his or her good: 8794 ,
8797. Thoughts and affections have this kind of outreach: 2475 , 6598 – 6613. We are united and
separated according to our dominant affections: 4111.
and live by them, our inner being is opened, and in it the design or form
of heaven is formed anew. We can see from this what it is to be in heav-
en’s form—namely, it is living according to what is in the Word.c
To the extent that people are in heaven’s form they are in heaven and 203
are in fact a heaven in least form (§ 57 ). Further, they live in intelligence
and wisdom to that same extent, for as already noted, all the thought of
our intellect and all the affection of our volition reach out round about us
in heaven according to its form and communicate wonderfully with the
communities there, and they in turn communicate with us.d
[ 2 ] There are people who believe that their thoughts and affections
do not really reach out around them but are inside them, because they
see what they are thinking as inside themselves and not as remote from
themselves. They are sadly mistaken, though; for just as our eyesight
reaches out to remote objects and is affected in keeping with the patterns
that it sees in that outreach, so our inner sight, which is an attribute of
our intellect, has an outreach in the spiritual world even though (for rea-
sons presented in § 196 above) we do not perceive it. The only difference
is that our eyesight is affected on the natural level because it is made of
materials from the natural world, while the sight of our intellect is
affected spiritually because it is made of materials in the spiritual world
that all have to do with what is good and true. The reason we do not
know that this is the case is that we do not know that there is a certain
light that illumines our understanding. Yet without the light that illu-
mines our understanding, we would be incapable of thinking anything.
(On this light, see above, §§ 126 – 132 .)