piritual wisdom was the wisdom of
wisdom, consequently that it was imperceptible to any wise man in the
natural world. It was then told them from the third heaven, that there
is a wisdom still interior and superior, which is called celestial,
bearing a proportion to spiritual wisdom like that which spiritual
wisdom bears to natural, and that these descend by an orderly influx
according to the heavens from the divine wisdom of the Lord, which is
infinite.

327. After this I said to the by-standers, "You have seen from these
three experimental proofs what is the difference between spiritual and
natural, and also the reason why the natural man does not appear to the
spiritual, nor the spiritual to the natural, although they are
consociated as to affections and thoughts, and thence as to presence.
Hence it is that, as I approached, at one time you, Sir, (addressing the
chief teacher), saw me, and at another you did not." After this, a voice
was heard from the superior heaven to the chief teacher, saying, "Come
up hither;" and he went up: and on his return, he said, that the angels,
as well as himself, did not before know the differences between
spiritual and natural, because there had never before been an
opportunity of comparing them together, by any person's existing at the
same time in both worlds; and without such comparison and reference
those differences were not ascertainable.

328. After this we retired, and conversing again on this subject, I
said, "Those differences originate solely in this circumstance of your
existence in the spiritual world, that you are in substantials and not
in materials: and substantials are the beginning of materials. You are
in principles and thereby in singulars; but we are in principiates and
composites; you are in particulars, but we are in generals; and as
generals cannot enter into particulars, so neither can natural things,
which are material, enter into spiritual things which are substantial,
any more than a ship's cable can enter into, or be drawn though, the eye
of a fine needle; or than a nerve can enter or be let into one of the
fibres of which it is composed, or a fibre into one of the fibrils of
which it is composed: this also is known in the world: therefore herein
the learned are agreed, that there is no such thing as an influx of what
is natural into what is spiritual, but of what is spiritual into what is
natural. This now is the reason why the natural man cannot conceiv