f from heaven by loving himself more than
the Lord and the world more than heaven, and in consequence began to
feel the delights of the love of self and the world as separate from
the delights of heaven, and finally to such an extent as to be
ignorant of any other delight. Then his interiors that had been open
into heaven were closed up, while his exteriors were open to the
world; and when this takes place man is in light in regard to all
things of the world, but in thick darkness in regard to all things of
heaven.

{Footnote 1} Spirits are unable to see through man any thing
that is in this solar world, but they have seen through my
eyes; the reason (n. 1880).

253. Since those times it is only rarely that any one has talked with
the angels of heaven; but some have talked with spirits who are not
in heaven. This is so because man's interior and exterior faculties
are such that they are turned either towards the Lord as their common
center (n. 124), or towards self, that is, backwards from the Lord.
Those that are turned towards the Lord are also turned towards
heaven. But those that are turned towards self, are turned also
towards the world. And to elevate these is a difficult matter;
nevertheless the Lord elevates them as much as is possible, by
turning the love about; which is done by means of truths from the
Word.

254. I have been told how the Lord spoke with the prophets through
whom the Word was given. He did not speak with them as He did with
the ancients, by an influx into their interiors, but through spirits
who were sent to them, whom He filled with His look, and thus
inspired with the words which they dictated to the prophets; so that
it was not influx but dictation. And as the words came forth directly
from the Lord, each one of them was filled with the Divine and
contains within it an internal sense, which is such that the angels
of heaven understand the words in a heavenly and spiritual sense,
while men understand them in a natural sense. Thus has the Lord
conjoined heaven and the world by means of the Word. How the Lord
fills spirits with the Divine by His look has also been made clear. A
spirit that has been filled by the Lord with the Divine does not know
otherwise than that he is the Lord, and that it is the Divine that is
speaking; and this continues until he has finished speaking. After
that he perceives and acknowledges that he is a spirit, and that he
spoke from the Lord and not fro