§248 how angels talk with us 127
exactly as though they themselves know everything we know, including
our languages.
[ 2 ] I have talked with angels about this and said that they might sup-
pose they were talking with me in my own mother tongue simply because
it seemed that way, when in fact it was not they talking but I. This fol-
lows from the fact that angels cannot utter a single word of our human
language (§ 237 ). Then too, human language is natural and they are spiri-
tual, and spiritual beings cannot produce anything natural. They have
answered that they knew that when they were talking with us their union
with us was with our spiritual thinking, but since this spiritual thinking
fl owed into our natural thought, and this natural thinking is so closely
allied with our memory, it seemed to them as though our language were
their own, along with all our acquired knowledge. This is because it has
pleased the Lord that there should be this kind of union and inner pres-
ence of heaven with us. However, they said, the state of humanity is now
such that this kind of union is no longer with angels but with spirits who
are not in heaven.
[ 3 ] I have talked with spirits about this matter, too; but they wanted
to believe not that we were talking but that they were talking within us,
so that we did not really know what we know, but they did, which meant
that everything we knew came from them. I wanted to convince them by
many arguments that this was not the case but failed.
We will explain later just who are meant by “angels” and who by
“spirits,” when we come to our description of the world of spirits.
The reason angels and spirits are so intimately united to us that it 247
seems to them as though our characteristics were their own is that there
is such an intimate union within us of the spiritual and the natural worlds
that they are virtually one. However, because we have separated ourselves
from heaven, the Lord has provided that there should be angels and spir-
its with each of us and that we should be governed by the Lord through
them. This is the reason there is such an intimate union.
It would have been different if we had not separated ourselves,
because then we could have been governed by the Lord through a general
infl ow from heaven without having spirits and angels assigned to us.
There will be more on this later, though, where we describe how
heaven is united to us.
When angels and spirits talk with us, it sounds just as audible as 248
when we talk with each other, but it is not audible to people who are
nearby, only to ourselves. This is because the speech of an angel or spirit