When they reached the lower regions below the heavens, they ran
toward one another as if each were trying to be first [to reach the other].
They hugged and kissed each other. I heard that when these two angels
lived in the world they formed a bond of deep friendship. Yet now one
was in the eastern part of heaven and the other was in the southern part.
The eastern heaven holds angels who focus on love from the Lord; the
southern heaven holds angels who focus on wisdom from the Lord.
After the angels spent a while talking about the magnificent things in
their heavens, a question came up in their conversation about whether
the essence of heaven is love or wisdom. They agreed right away that each
one relates to the other; but they were discussing which one was the ori-
gin of the other.
[ 2 ] The angel from the heaven of wisdom asked the other angel,
“What is love?”
The other angel replied, “The love that originates from the Lord as a
sun is the vital heat that angels and people have—it is the underlying
reality of their lives. The derivatives of love are called feelings. Feelings
produce perceptions and therefore thoughts. It flows from this that wis-
dom starts out as love, and therefore thought starts out as the feeling
related to that love. Looking at the derivatives in sequence makes it possi-
ble to see that thought is nothing but the form of the feeling. This is not
generally known, because thoughts exist in light but feelings exist in heat,
and therefore people reflect on their thoughts but not on their feelings.
“The fact that thought is nothing but the form of a feeling related to
some love can be illustrated by the fact that speech is nothing but the
form of sound. In fact, sound corresponds to feeling and speech corre-
sponds to thought. Feelings make sounds, and thoughts speak.
“This point would become crystal clear if someone were to say, ‘Take
the sound out of your speech.’ Would there be any speech left? Also,
‘Take the feeling out of your thinking.’ Would there be any thinking left?
“Clearly then, the most important ingredient in wisdom is love.
Therefore the essence of the heavens is love and their form is wisdom. Or
to put it another way, the heavens exist as the result of divine love and
they take shape as the result of divine love acting through divine wisdom.
Therefore, as we said before, each one does indeed relate to the other.”
[ 3 ] At the time there was a spirit with me who had recently arrived
[in the spiritual world], who heard all this and asked, “Is it the same for
goodwill and faith, since goodwill relates to feeling and faith relates to
thinking?”
§386 faith 467