body is formed to serve the understanding and the will in the world, and to skillfully accomplish their uses in the outmost sphere of nature.  For this reason the body by itself can do nothing, but is moved always in entire subservience to the bidding of the understanding and will, even to the extent that whatever a man thinks he speaks with his tongue and lips, and whatever he wills he does with his body and limbs, and thus the understanding and the will are what act, while the body by itself does nothing.  Evidently, then, the things of the understanding and will are what make man; and as these act into the minutest particulars of the body, as what is internal into what is external, they must be in a like form, and on this account man is called an internal or spiritual man.  Heaven is such a man in its greatest and most perfect form.

61.  Such being the angelic idea of man, the angels give no thought to what a man does with his body, but only to the will from which the body acts.  This they call the man himself, and the understanding they call the man so far as it acts in unison with the will.{1}

{Footnote 1} The will of man is the very being [esse] of his life, and his understanding is the outgo [existere] of his life therefrom (n. 3619, 5002, 9282).  The chief life of man is the life of his will, and from that the life of the understanding proceeds (n. 585, 590, 3619, 7342, 8885, 9282, 10076, 10109, 10110).  Man is man by virtue of his will and his understanding therefrom (n. 8911, 9069, 9071, 10076, 10109, 10110).

62.  The angels, it is true, do not see heaven in its whole complex in the human form, for heaven as a whole does not come within view of any angel; but remote societies, consisting of many thousands of angels, they sometimes see as a one in the human form; and from a society, as from a part, they draw their conclusion as to the general, which is heaven.  For in the most perfect form generals are like the parts, and parts are like the generals, with simply such a difference as there is between like things of greater or less magnitude; consequently, the angels say that since the Divine from what is inmost or highest sees all things, so in the Lord’s sight heaven as a whole must be in the human form.

63.  Heaven being such, it is ruled by the Lord as a single man is ruled, thus as a one.  For although man, as we know, consists of an innumerable variety of parts, not only as a whole but also in each part-as a whole, of members, organs, and viscera; and in each part, of series of fibers, nerves, and blood-vessels, thus of members within members, and of parts within parts-nevertheless, when he acts he acts as a single man.  Such likewise is heaven under the auspices and direction of the Lord.