pace and
time have nothing to do with their presence, for affection and thought
therefrom are not in space and time, and spirits and angels are
affections and thoughts therefrom.

[3] I have been given to know this by living experience over many years.
For I have spoken with many on their death, some in different kingdoms of
Europe, and some in different kingdoms of Asia and Africa, and all were
near me. If space and time existed for them, a journey and time to make
it would have intervened.

[4] Indeed, every man knows this by some instinct in him or in his mind,
as has been verified to me by the fact that nobody has thought of
distances when I have reported that I had spoken with some person who
died in Asia, Africa or Europe, for example with Calvin, Luther, or
Melancthon, or with some king, governor or priest in a far region. The
thought occurred to no one, "How could he speak with those who had lived
there, and how could they come and be present with him, when lands and
seas lay between?" So it was plain to me that in thinking of those in the
spiritual world a man does not think of space and time. For those there,
however, there is an appearance of time and space; see the work _Heaven
and Hell,_ nn. 162-169, 191-199.

51. From these considerations it may now be plain that the infinite and
eternal, thus the Lord, are to be thought of apart from space and time
and can be so thought of; plain, likewise, that they are so thought of by
those who think interiorly and rationally; and plain that the infinite
and eternal are identical with the Divine. So think angels and spirits.
In thought withdrawn from space and time, divine omnipresence is
comprehended, and divine omnipotence, also the Divine from eternity, but
these are not at all grasped by thought to which an idea of space and
time adheres. Plain it is, then, that one can conceive of God from
eternity, but never of nature from eternity. So one can think of the
creation of the world by God, but never of its creation from nature, for
space and time are proper to nature, but the Divine is apart from them.
That the Divine is apart from space and time may be seen in the treatise
_Divine Love and Wisdom_ (nn. 7-10, 69-72, 73-76, and other places).

52. (ii) _What is infinite and eternal in itself cannot but look to what
is infinite and eternal from itself in finite things._ By what is
infinite and eternal in itself the Divine itself is meant, as was shown
in the preced