HH 247, 252 - The Angels and Spirits Around Us

HH 247

. . . there is such conjunction between
the spiritual world and the natural world in a person
that the two are seemingly one.
But inasmuch as a person
has separated himself from heaven
the Lord has provided that there should be
angels and spirits with each individual,
and that a person should be ruled
by the Lord through these.
This is the reason for such close conjunction.
It would have been otherwise
if a person had not separated himself;
for in that case
he might have been ruled by the Lord
through the general influx from heaven,
without spirits and angels being adjoined to him.

HH 252

Because this race (those of the Golden Age)
acknowledged the Divine under a human form,
that is, the Lord,
they talked with the angels of heaven
as with their friends,
and angels of heaven talked with them
as with their friends;
and in them heaven and the world made one.
But after those times
mankind gradually separated himself from heaven
by loving himself more than the Lord
and the world more than heaven,
and in consequence began to feel
the delights of the love of self and the world
as separate from the delights of heaven,
and finally to such an extent
as to be ignorant of any other delight.
Then his interiors that had been open into heaven
were closed up,
while his exteriors were open to the world;
and when this takes place a person is in light
in regard to all things of the world,
but in thick darkness in regard to all things of heaven.