Selection from Emanuel Swedenborg's Spiritual Diary
The progression of truth, or faith, from science, to understanding; after that, from understanding to will, and from will to act: from conversation with angels.I spoke with angels about the progression of truth to good, thus of faith to charity [to the effect] that angels experience joy when man, as infant and boy, learns and imbibes truths from affection, thus when truths become of knowledge; and that they experience still greater joy when they becomes of the understanding: at such time the joy is experienced by the angels in the Lord's spiritual kingdom. There is still greater joy, when truth, from the understanding, becomes of the will: the joy then is to the angels in the Lord's celestial kingdom. And when, from will, it becomes of act, then is there joy with the angels of the three heavens. How much joy, and how great delights, dwell in that progression, cannot be described, because it is ineffable; for thus man enters more and more into heaven, and becomes a heaven in the least form. This I perceived, while I spoke with the angels, from the progression of the delights of conjugial love [the marriage of truth and good], even to the very ultimate effect, from which man is procreated. Such is the progression of conjunction with heaven, that is, with the Lord, and such is the new creation of man, and the formation of heaven, or of the angel, in him; for heaven is the form of Divine Truth thus progressing. Hence man becomes a love; and in no other way is the marriage of truth and good established in him.
(Spiritual Diary 6011)