184.  But it is better to present the evidence of experience.  Whenever I have talked with angels face to face, I have been with them in their abodes.  These abodes are precisely like abodes on the earth which we call houses, but more beautiful.  In them there are chambers, parlors, and bedrooms in great number; there are also courts, and there are gardens and flower beds and lawns round about.  Where they live together their houses are near each other, arranged one next to the other in the form of a city, with avenues, streets, and public squares, exactly like cities on the earth.  I have been permitted to pass through them, looking about on every side, and sometimes entering the houses.  This occurred when my inner sight was opened, and I was fully awake.{1}

  {Footnote 1} Angels have cities, palaces and houses (n.
  940-942, 1116, 1626-1631, 4622).

185.  I have seen palaces in heaven of such magnificence as cannot be described.  Above they glittered as if made of pure gold, and below as if made of precious stones, some more splendid than others.  It was the same within.  Both words and knowledge are inadequate to describe the decorations that adorned the rooms.  On the side looking to the south there were parks, where, too, everything shone, in some places the leaves glistening as if made of silver, and fruit as if made of gold; while the flowers in their beds formed rainbows with their colors.  Beyond the borders, where the view terminated, were seen other palaces.  Such is the architecture of heaven that you would say that art there is in its art; and no wonder, because the art itself is from heaven.  The angels said that such things and innumerable others still more perfect are presented before their eyes by the Lord; and yet these things are more pleasing to their minds than to their eyes, because in everyone of them they see a correspondence, and through the correspondences what is Divine.

186.  As to these correspondences I have also been told that not only the palaces and houses, but all things and each thing, both inside and outside of them, correspond to the interior things which they have from the Lord, the house itself in general corresponding to their good, the particular things inside of a house to the various things of which their good consists,{1} and the things outside to truths derived from good, and also to their perceptions and knowledges {2} and as these things correspond to the goods and truths they have from the Lord they correspond to their love, and to their wisdom and intelligence from love, since love belongs to good, wisdom to good and truth together, and intelligence to truth from good.  These are what the angels perceive when they behold what is around them, and thus their minds are more delighted and moved by them than their eyes.