36. The wisdom that comes to our consciousness is a sense of what is true prompted by a desire for it. This is the case particularly for spiritual truth: for there is civic truth, there is moral truth, and there is spiritual truth. When we are conscious of spiritual truth because we are drawn to it we are conscious of moral and civic truth as well, because a desire for spiritual truth is their soul.

I have talked with angels about wisdom on occasion, and they have told me that wisdom is union with the Lord because the Lord is wisdom itself. They have told me that they attain this union when they banish hell from themselves, and that the union is in direct proportion to the banishment.

They picture wisdom, they said, as a wonderfully elegant palace with twelve steps leading up to it. No one gets to the first step except with the Lord's help and by union with him, and for all of us, the ascent depends on that union. The higher we climb, the more clearly we realize that no one is wise on her or his own, but only from the Lord. We also realize that relative to what we do not know, what we do know is like a droplet compared to a vast lake. The twelve steps to the palace of wisdom mean whatever is good united to what is true and whatever is true united to what is good.

774. The Lord is perpetually present with every person, wicked as well as good, for no one could live without His presence. But His coming is restricted to those who receive Him, and these are those who believe in Him and keep His commandments. It is the Lord's perpetual presence which gives a person the faculty of reason and the ability to become spiritual. This is brought about by the light which comes from the Lord as the sun of the spiritual world, which a person can receive in his understanding. That light is the truth which gives him the power of reasoning. The Lord's coming, however, takes place with the person who combines heat with that light, that is, combines love with truth. For the heat radiated by that same sun is love for God and towards the neighbour. The Lord's presence by itself, and the enlightenment it brings to the understanding, can be compared with the presence of sunlight in the world; unless it is combined with heat, everything upon earth is desolate. But the Lord's coming can be compared with the coming of heat, which happens in springtime. Since then heat is combined with light, the earth is softened up, seeds sprout and bear fruit. Such is the parallel between the spiritual environment of a person's spirit and the natural environment of his body.