nter more nearly into my thoughts, even
into the natural thoughts in which there were many things from time
and space; but as they then understood nothing they suddenly
withdrew; and after they had withdrawn I heard them talking, and
saying that they had been in darkness. [2] It has been granted me to
know by experience how ignorant the angels are about time. There was
a certain one from heaven who was able to enter into natural ideas,
such as man has; and after he had done this I talked with him as man
with man. At first he did not know what it was that I called time,
and I was therefore obliged to tell him all about it, how the sun
appears to be carried about our earth, and to produce years and days,
and how years are thereby divided into four seasons, and also into
months and weeks, and days into twenty-four hours; and how these
times recur by fixed alternations, and how this is the source of
times. On hearing this he was surprised, saying that he knew nothing
about such things, but only what states are. [3] In speaking with him
I added that it is known in the world, for men speak as if they knew
that there is no time in heaven, saying of those who die that they
"leave the things of time," and that they "pass out of time," meaning
by this out of the world. I said also that some know that times in
their origin are states, for they know that times are in exact accord
with the states of their affections, short to those who are in
pleasant and joyous states, long to those who are in unpleasant and
sorrowful states, and various in a state of hope and expectation; and
this therefore leads learned men to inquire what time and space are,
and some know that time belongs to the natural man.

169. The natural man might think that he would be deprived of all
thought if the ideas of time, space, and material things were taken
away; for upon these all the thought of man rests.{1} But let him
know that so far as thoughts partake of time, space, and matter they
are limited and confined, but are unlimited and extended so far as
they do not partake of these, since the mind is in that measure
raised above bodily and worldly things. This is the source of wisdom
to the angels; and such wisdom as is called incomprehensible, because
it does not fall into ideas that are wholly made up of what is
material.

{Footnote 1} Man does not think, as angels do, apart from the
idea of time (n. 3404).

170. XIX. REPRESENTATIVES AND APPEA