5548. The first degree, which is the inmost one with the internal, is the Lord's alone, and may be said to be the very dwelling-place of the Lord* in heaven; for what is there transacted the angel does not know, but yet he is ruled by the Lord through it. The second degree with the internal, is one which comes to their perception indeed, like the internal of man does to that of his external. The third degree is the one in which these angels live, and where they have their perception: their human is there, and their soul in the second degree; just as man thinks in his natural and sensual, and not in the internal intellectual. Thus those in that heaven possess an external like all spirits; but it is quiescent with them, and they do not know that they have it: thus, it is quiescent like a man's external when he is asleep. But, still, that external is filled with their internals. Through it occurs the communication with those who are in externals, or in the spiritual world,** by means of the celestial-spiritual. * The inmost degree of the human mind is so described in Heaven and Hell, no. 39. -ED. ** The phrase "spiritual world" seems to be employed here in a sense altogether unusual, as designating, namely, the "world," or region, in the other life, which the "spiritual" angels, as distinguished from the "celestial," inhabit. -ED.