2572. 'Dwell in that which is good in your eyes' means His Being, present in everything where good exists, and in the proximate sense His Being, present in the good of doctrine. This becomes clear from the meaning of 'the eyes' as the understanding part of the mind, which is the recipient of doctrine, and from the meaning of 'dwelling' as living, 1293, here as Being (Esse) because what is said has reference to the Lord. This Being (Esse), present in everything where good exists, is the essential being within a complete knowledge of all Divine, celestial, spiritual, rational, and natural things. And the reason for this lies with Divine Love, for Divine Love holds within itself a complete knowledge of all those things, 2500.

[2] What is more, there is the good of doctrine and there is the truth of doctrine. The good of doctrine is love and charity, the truth of doctrine is faith. People with whom the good of doctrine resides, that is, love and charity, have with them the truth of doctrine, that is, faith. But it is one thing for good, that is, love and charity, to exist with a person, quite another for the good of doctrine to do so. Young children with whom love towards parents and charity towards other young children exist are moved by good but not by the good of doctrine, nor consequently by the truth of doctrine, or faith. The people with whom the good of doctrine exists are those who have been regenerated by means of the truths of faith. To the extent that good resides with them truths reside with them; that is, to the extent that love and charity reside with them so does faith, and therefore wisdom and intelligence.

[3] Because love to the Lord and mutual love resides with angels, so also does all truth and thus all wisdom and intelligence, not only in celestial and spiritual things but also in rational and natural. For by virtue of love, it being from the Lord, they are in touch with the very beginnings or sources of things, that is, with ends in view and causes. Seeing from beginnings, that is, from ends and causes, is seeing from heaven all things that are below, even those on earth. This is like - to use a comparison - someone in a watch-tower set on a high mountain. He is able to look around for many miles on the objects that are below, while those who are below, especially those down in a valley or in a forest, can hardly see the same number of paces away. So it is with those governed by the good of doctrine in comparison with those governed by the truth of doctrine separated from good. Although the latter imagine that they can see further than the former, they do not in fact see any good at all, nor any truth except very slightly and superficially, and even that is defiled by falsities.

[4] Even so, the wisdom and intelligence of angels is finite, and in comparison with the Lord's Divine Wisdom most finite, amounting to hardly anything. This may be recognized from the fact that the infinite and the finite cannot be measured one against the other, and yet communication from the Divine omnipotence is possible; also from the fact that the Lord is Good itself and Love itself, and is therefore the Essential Being (Esse) of good and the Essential Being (Esse) of love which resides with angels, and so the Essential Being (Esse) of their wisdom and intelligence. From this it may also be evident that the Lord is present in heaven and on earth in everything where good exists. People who imagine that the Lord is present in truth separated from good are very much mistaken, for He is present solely in good and from this in truth, that is, in love and charity, and from these in faith.

71. To show that the merely natural person thinks about spiritual and Divine matters in terms of space, and the spiritual person independently of space, let the following illustration suffice.

The merely natural person thinks in terms of ideas that he has acquired from objects visible to his sight, all of which exhibit in them a configuration possessing length, breadth and height and having a shape delimited by these, whether angular or curvilinear. These dimensions are clearly present in his mental conceptions of visible objects in the world, and they are also present in his mental conceptions of things not visible, as in his conceptions of civil and moral matters. He does not, indeed, see them, but still they are present as extended concepts.

[2] It is otherwise in the case of a spiritual person, especially in the case of an angel in heaven. His thinking is unrelated to configuration and form having anything do to with spatial length, breadth or height, but having to do with the state of a thing arising from the state of a person's life. Consequently, instead of spatial length he pictures the goodness of a thing arising from the goodness of a person's life, instead of spatial breadth the truth of a thing arising from the truth of a person's life, and instead of height degrees of these. Thus he thinks in terms of correspondence, which is the relation of spiritual and natural things to each other. And it is because of this correspondence that length in the Word symbolizes the goodness of a thing, breadth the truth of a thing, and height degrees of these.

It is apparent from this that when an angel in heaven reflects on the Divine omnipresence, it is utterly impossible for him to think otherwise than that the Divine fills all things independently of space. What an angel thinks is true, because the light that enlightens his intellect is Divine wisdom.