68. Another reason for people’s affiliation with angels through the Word’s natural or literal sense is that every person has in him from creation three degrees of life — celestial, spiritual and natural. However, as long as he lives in the world a person is in the natural degree, and in the spiritual degree then to the extent he is governed by genuine truths, and in the celestial degree to the extent he lives a life in accordance with them. Yet it is still only after death that he enters actually into the spiritual or celestial degree.
But more on this subject elsewhere.
