of all things is from
action and simultaneous reaction, and in equilibrium everything must be.
These things have been said lest man should believe that he himself
ascends toward God from himself, and not from the Lord.

69. THE DIVINE, APART FROM SPACE, FILLS ALL SPACES OF THE UNIVERSE.

There are two things proper to nature - space and time. From these man
in the natural world forms the ideas of his thought, and thereby his
understanding. If he remains in these ideas, and does not raise his mind
above them, he is in no wise able to perceive things spiritual and Divine,
for these he involves in ideas drawn from space and time; and so far as
that is done the light [lumen] of his understanding becomes merely
natural. To think from this lumen in reasoning about spiritual and
Divine things, is like thinking from the thick darkness of night about
those things that appear only in the light of day. From this comes
naturalism. But he who knows how to raise his mind above ideas of thought
drawn from space and time, passes from thick darkness into light, and has
discernment in things spiritual and Divine, and finally sees the things
which are in and from what is spiritual and Divine; and then from that
light he dispels the thick darkness of the natural lumen, and banishes
its fallacies from the middle to the sides. Every man who has
understanding is able to transcend in thought these properties of nature,
and actually does so; and he then affirms and sees that the Divine,
because omnipresent, is not in space. He is also able to affirm and to
see the things that have been adduced above. But if he denies the Divine
Omnipresence, and ascribes all things to nature, then he has no wish to
be elevated, though he can be.

70. All who die and become angels put off the two above- mentioned
properties of nature, namely, space and time; for they then enter into
spiritual light, in which objects of thought are truths, and objects of
sight are like those in the natural world, but are correspondent to their
thoughts. The objects of their thought which, as just said, are truths,
derive nothing at all from space and time; and though the objects of
their sight appear as if in space and in time, still the angels do not
think from space and time. The reason is, that spaces and times there
are not fixed, as in the natural world, but are changeable according to
the states of their life. In the ideas of their thought, therefore,
instead of space an