9613. 'And the dwelling-place shall be one' means that the whole heaven is as a result altogether one. This is clear from the meaning of 'the dwelling-place' as heaven, dealt with in 9594. The fact that it is one when it is so completely joined together is self-evident. For heaven consists of tens of thousands of angelic communities, and yet the Lord leads them as one total angel or man. This is so because mutual love springing from the Lord's love exists among them all, and when that love exists among them all and within them all they can all be arranged into the heavenly form, the nature of which is such that many are one, and the more numerous they are, the stronger is their oneness. They are like the countless parts of the human body; although these are distinct and various they nevertheless make one. The reason why they do so is that they exist within a form similar to that in which heaven exists; for they correspond to heaven, as has been shown at the ends of a number of chapters, and by virtue of that correspondence they possess a kind of mutual love and are joined together by it. So it is that a person who is governed by the good of love and faith is heaven in its smallest form, 9279, and that the whole of heaven is seen in the Lord's eyes as one total human being, 9276 (end).

[2] All the joining together of so many countless angelic communities in heaven and the modes by which they are joined were represented by the pattern according to which the dwelling-place and the tent, the subject in the present chapter, were assembled. But the modes by which things are joined together, as those modes exist in heaven, cannot pass from there into the ideas people in the world have, because they are not even aware of the fact that heaven was represented by 'the dwelling-place'. Or if they were aware of it they would still be unaware that heavenly communities have been so joined together by means of love that they present themselves as one. Yet all such considerations enter fully into angels' ideas when those details regarding the dwelling-place are read; for each specific detail in the description has an inner meaning, which, when manifested by the Lord to angels, presents to them the state in which all in the whole of heaven are joined to and interconnected with one another by means of love which comes from the Lord.

[3] The combination of the angelic communities into one heaven takes place in accord with the following laws,

1. Every complete whole in heaven arises from the pattern of many sharing their lives with one another in accord with the harmony of heaven.

2. Love is spiritual togetherness, which leads to the harmony of heaven.

3. There must be a universal bond, in order that the individual constituents may be held in combination and interconnection.

4. The universal bond must enter into and create the individual bonds.

5. The universal bond is the Lord, that is, it is the love that comes from Him, and from this the love directed towards Him.

6. The individual bonds are derived from the universal; they are the bonds of mutual love or charity towards the neighbour.

These are the laws by virtue of which heaven, consisting of countless angelic communities, nevertheless exists as one total human being.

6598. INFLUX AND THE INTERACTION OF SOUL AND BODY - continued

It is well known that one person is endowed with a greater ability than another to understand and perceive what it is to behave honourably in private life, to be upright in public life, and to seek what is good in one's spiritual life. The reason why he has that greater ability lies in the fact that his thought has been raised towards the things of heaven and is consequently drawn away from the level of the external senses. For people whose thought does not rise above the level of the senses cannot begin to see what is honourable, upright, or good. They therefore rely on what others think, and base most of what they say on matters stored in the memory, and in doing this seem to themselves to be wiser than others. But those who can think on a level above the senses possess, if the contents of their memory are all in order, a greater ability than others to understand and perceive. Their ability depends on the height of the interior standpoint from which they look at things.