When the seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” is read, by “killing” a man understands hating and desiring revenge, even to murder.  But an angel of the spiritual kingdom by “killing” understands the killing of a man’s soul by stumbling blocks to the life and by reasonings, whereby a man is led into spiritual death, while an angel of the celestial kingdom by “killing” understands seducing a man into believing that there is no God and no heaven and no hell, for thus man’s eternal life is destroyed.

When the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” is read, a man by “false witness” understands lying and defamation.  But an angel of the spiritual kingdom by “false witness” understands asserting, proving, and persuading that falsity is truth and evil is good, or on the other hand that truth is falsity and good is evil, while an angel of the celestial kingdom by “false witness” understands every falsity against the Lord, and against heaven in favor of hell.

All this makes clear how a man draws and calls forth from the Word in the letter a natural sense, a spiritual angel a spiritual sense, and a celestial angel a celestial sense, much as the wood of a tree draws its sap, the leaf its sap, and the fruit its sap, from the same soil.  And what is wonderful, this is done instantly, without the angel’s knowing what the man thinks, or the man what the angel thinks, and yet their thoughts are one by correspondences, as end, cause, and effect are one.  Moreover, ends are actually in the celestial kingdom, causes in the spiritual kingdom, causes in the spiritual kingdom, and effects in the natural world. (A.E., n. 1083.)

VI.  Conjunction by the Word

Since it is from creation that end, cause, and effect shall together make one, so it is from creation that the heavens shall make one with the church on the earth, but by means of the Word, when it is read by man from a love of truth and good.  For the Word was given by the Lord to this end, that there might be a perpetual conjunction of the angels of heaven with men on the earth, and a perpetual communication according to conjunction.  Without this medium there would be no conjunction or communication with heaven on this earth.  The conjunction and communication are instantaneous, and for the reason that all things of the Word in the sense of the letter are as effects, in which the cause and the end exist together, and the effects, which are in the Word, are called uses, their cause truths, and their ends goods; and the Divine love, which is the Lord, unites these three together in the man who is in an affection for uses from the Word.

How a man draws and calls forth from the Word in the letter the natural sense, a spiritual angel the spiritual sense, and a celestial angel the celestial sense, and this instantly, from which there is a communication and a conjunction, shall be illustrated by comparisons; first by something in the animal kingdom, afterward by something in the vegetable kingdom, and finally by something in the mineral kingdom.