plied the doctrinals of the church which are from the Word
immediately to life, are in the inmost heaven, and surpass all others
in their delights of wisdom. In every object they see what is Divine;
the objects they see indeed with their eyes; but the corresponding
Divine things flow in immediately into their minds and fill them with
a blessedness that affects all their sensations. Thus before their
eyes all things seem to laugh, to play, and to live (see above,
n. 270). [4] Those that have loved knowledges and have thereby
cultivated their rational faculty and acquired intelligence, and at
the same time have acknowledged the Divine-these in the other life
have their pleasure in knowledges, and their rational delight changed
into spiritual delight, which is delight in knowing good and truth.
They dwell in gardens where flower beds and grass plots are seen
beautifully arranged, with rows of trees round about, and arbors and
walks, the trees and flowers changing from day to day. The entire
view imparts delight to their minds in a general way, and the
variations in detail continually renew the delight; and as everything
there corresponds to something Divine, and they are skilled in the
knowledge of correspondences, they are constantly filled with new
knowledges, and by these their spiritual rational faculty is
perfected. Their delights are such because gardens, flower beds,
grass plots, and trees correspond to sciences, knowledges, and the
resulting intelligence.{2} [5] Those that have ascribed all things to
the Divine, regarding nature as relatively dead and merely
subservient to things spiritual, and have confirmed themselves in
this view, are in heavenly light; and all things that appear before
their eyes are made by that light transparent, and in their
transparency exhibit innumerable variegations of light, which their
internal sight takes in as it were directly, and from this they
perceive interior delights. The things seen within their houses are
as if made of diamonds, with similar variegations of light. The walls
of their houses, as already said, are like crystal, and thus also
transparent; and in them seemingly flowing forms representative of
heavenly things are seen also with unceasing variety, and this
because such transparency corresponds to the understanding when it
has been enlightened by the Lord and when the shadows that arise from
a belief in and love for natural things have been removed. With
reference to