8644. 'The father-in-law of Moses' means the source of the good that was joined to God's truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'the father-in-law' as the good from which sprang the good that was joined to truth, dealt with in 6827; and from the representation of 'Moses' as God's truth, dealt with in 6752, 6771, 7010, 7014, 7382. The reason why 'the father-in-law' means the good from which sprang the good that was joined to truth is that the wife means good when the man means truth, 2517, 4510, 4823. Since the subject in what follows below is the joining together of Divine Good and Divine Truth, to the end that the arranging of truths into order may as a result take place with the member of the Church, it should be recognized that there is a difference between Divine Good and Divine Truth, in that Divine Good exists within the Lord, but that Divine Truth emanates from the Lord. They are like the fire of the sun and the light radiating from it. Fire exists within the sun but the light radiates from the sun; light holds no fire, only heat.

[2] Furthermore in the next life the Lord is the Sun, and He is the Light too. The Sun there, that is, He Himself, is Divine fire, which is the Divine Good of Divine Love. That Sun is the source of Divine light, which is Divine Truth emanating from Divine Good. This Divine Truth also holds within it Divine Good, though not such as it is in the Sun; it is modified for its reception in heaven. Unless it had been modified for reception, heaven could not have come into existence; for no angel can bear the flame coming from Divine Love. An angel would be consumed by it instantly, just as anyone would be the instant that the flame of the sun in the world breathed on him.

[3] But the way in which the Divine Good of the Lord's Divine Love is modified for reception cannot be known by anyone, not even by angels in heaven, because it is a modification of the Infinite for the finite. The Infinite is such that it lies far beyond all the power of understanding which the finite possesses, so far beyond that when that power of understanding tries to fix its attention on the Infinite it falls away like someone sinking into the depths of the sea and perishes. Regarding the Lord, that He is the Sun in heaven, that the Sun there is the Divine Good of His Divine Love, and that the Light from it is Divine Truth, the source of intelligence, see 1053, 1521-1533, 1619-1632, 2776, 3094, 3138, 3190, 3195, 3222, 3223, 3225, 3339, 3341, 3636, 3643, 3993, 4180, 4302, 4408, 4409, 4415, 4523, 4533, 4696, 7083, 7171, 7174, 7270, 8197.

4408. The existence of a correspondence between the sight of the eye and that of the understanding is perfectly plain to those who stop to reflect, since the objects that make up the world, each of which derives something from the light of the sun, come in through the eye and store themselves in the memory. They deposit themselves there as visual impressions of those objects, for the things which a person recalls from the memory are seen inwardly by him. They are the source of man's formation of mental images, whose constituent ideas philosophers term material ideas. And when a person sees these objects even more inwardly within himself they present themselves as thought, doing so again as something like visual impressions, though purer ones, whose constituent ideas are called immaterial, and also intellectual. The existence of an interior light holding life, and therefore intelligence and wisdom, within it, which provides the light for the interior sight and meets those impressions which have come in through the external sight, is plainly evident, as also is the fact that the action of the interior light is dependent on the way in which things that are present there from the light of the world are deployed. The things which come in through hearing are also converted inwardly into impressions similar to the visual ones which are formed from the light of the world.