n clear light, and thus illustrate
them, when there is some previous knowledge of causes.

257. The effects are these: (1) The natural mind may be raised up to the
light of heaven in which angels are, and may perceive naturally, thus not
so fully, what the angels perceive spiritually; nevertheless, man's
natural mind cannot be raised into angelic light itself. (2) By means of
his natural mind, raised to the light of heaven, man can think, yea,
speak with angels; but the thought and speech of the angels then flow
into the natural thought and speech of the man, and not conversely; so
that angels speak with man in a natural language, which is the man's
mother tongue. (3) This is effected by a spiritual influx into what is
natural, and not by any natural influx into what is spiritual. (4) Human
wisdom, which so long as man lives in the natural world is natural, can
by no means be raised into angelic wisdom, but only into some image of
it. The reason is, that elevation of the natural mind is effected by
continuity, as from shade to light, or from grosser to purer. Still the
man in whom the spiritual degree has been opened comes into that wisdom
when he dies; and he may also come into it by a suspension of bodily
sensations, and then by an influx from above into the spiritual parts
of his mind. (5) Man's natural mind consists of spiritual substances
together with natural substances; thought comes from its spiritual
substances, not from its natural substances; these recede when the man
dies, while its spiritual substances do not. Consequently, after death,
when man becomes a spirit or angel, the same mind remains in a form like
that which it had in the world. (6) The natural substances of that mind,
which recede (as was said) by death, constitute the cutaneous covering
of the spiritual body which spirits and angels have. By means of such
covering, which is taken from the natural world, their spiritual bodies
maintain existence; for the natural is the outmost containant:
consequently there is no spirit or angel who was not born a man. These
arcana of angelic wisdom are here adduced that the quality of the natural
mind in man may be known, which subject is further treated of in what
follows.

258. Every man is born into a capacity to understand truths even to the
inmost degree in which the angels of the third heaven are; for the human
understanding, rising up by continuity around the two higher degrees,
receives the light of th