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 their wisdom, in the manner stated above (n. 256).  Therefore man has the ability to become rational according to his elevation; if raised to the third degree he becomes rational from that degree, if raised to the second degree he becomes rational from that degree, if not raised he is rational in the first degree.  It is said that he becomes rational from those degrees, because the natural degree is the general receptacle of their light.  The reason why man does not become rational to the height that he might is, that love, which is of the will, cannot be raised in the same manner as wisdom, which is of the understanding.  Love, which is of the will, is raised only by fleeing from evils as sins, and then by goods of charity, which are uses, which the man thereafter performs from the Lord.  Consequently, when love, which is of the will, is not at the same time raised, wisdom, which is of the understanding, however it may have ascended, falls back again down to its own love.  Therefore, if man’s love is not at the same time raised into the spiritual degree, he is rational only in the lowest degree.  From all this it can be seen that man’s rational is in appearance as if it were of three degrees, a rational from the celestial, a rational from the spiritual, and a rational from the natural; also that rationality, which is the capacity whereby man is elevated, is still in man whether he be elevated or not.