what is spiritual and what is earthly. You also see the reason why an
earthly person cannot be seen by a spiritual person or a spiritual person by
an earthly person, despite the fact that all people of both kinds are in a
complete human form. Because they have this form in common, it might
seem that an earthly person would be able to see a spiritual person. Yet the
factors that make up the form of spiritual people are inner things belong-
ing to the mind; and the mind of spirits and angels is made of things that
are spiritual, while the mind of people, as long as they are still alive in the
world, is made of things that are earthly.”
After that a voice was heard coming from a higher heaven saying to
one of the people there, “Come up here.” That person went up and came
back and said that until then the angels had not known the differences
between what is spiritual and what is earthly, because no one had had the
opportunity to make the comparison by being in both worlds at once and
those differences cannot be known without comparison and contrast.
[ 8 ] Before we parted company, we discussed this topic some more. I
said, “The differences we are discussing come solely from the fact that
you who are in the spiritual world are essential and nonphysical.
Essences are the roots of physical substances. What is matter but an
aggregation of essences? Therefore you are involved in primary struc-
tures and individual essences, while we are involved in derivatives of pri-
mary structures and composites. You are involved in what is particular;
we are involved in what is general. Something general cannot climb
onto the same level with something particular; therefore earthly things
that are physical cannot climb onto the same level as spiritual things
that are formed of essences any more than the cable that moors a ship
could pass through the eye of a sewing needle, or any more than a nerve
could fit inside one of the fibers that compose it. This then is the reason
why a physical person cannot think or say what a spiritual person can.
This is why Paul says that the things he heard in the third heaven were
inexpressible [ 2 Corinthians 12 : 2 – 4 ].
[ 9 ] “Furthermore, to think in a spiritual way is to think apart from
time and space, while to think in an earthly way is to think in terms of time
and space. Every idea that comes out of earthly thinking has some aspect of
time and space attached to it. This is not true, however, of spiritual ideas.
The reason is that the spiritual world does not have time and space in the
way the physical world does; instead the spiritual world has apparent time
and space.
singke
(singke)
#1