8397. 'And they travelled on from Elim' means a further stage. This is clear from the meaning of 'travelling on' as a further stage and a continuation, dealt with in 4375, 4554, 4585, 5996, 8181, 8345; and from the meaning of 'Elim' as a state of comfort after temptation, dealt with in 8367. So it is that 'they travelled on from Elim' means a further stage in life so far as states involving temptations are concerned; for when those belonging to the spiritual Church undergo temptations they are led on from one temptation into another. This further stage is what 'travelling on' means here. The reason why 'travelling on' means a further stage in life is that extents of space, like periods of time, do not exist in the next life, but states instead, 2625, 2837, 3356, 3387, 4321, 4882, 5605, 7381. Consequently movements are not meant by 'movements', nor travellings on by 'travellings on', but changes of states and further stages.

3356. The reason 'a quake' means an alteration of state is that a quake occurs within the space-time continuum, and in the next life there is no concept of space and time, but instead of these the concept of state. In the next life it does indeed appear as though all things exist within space and follow one another in a time-sequence, but in themselves they are alterations of state, for space and time there are the products of these. This is very well known to all spirits, even evil ones, who by means of alterations of state effected in others cause them to appear somewhere other than where they in fact are. Man too is able to know of this from the fact that insofar as his state is one of affection and therefore of joy, or insofar as it is one of thought and therefore of withdrawal from the body, he is outside time. For while such a state lasts, many hours seem to him to be as scarcely one hour. The reason for this is that states belong to his internal man, which is his spirit, to which states intervals of space and periods of time in the external man correspond. 'A quake' therefore, being one of the consecutive events that occur within space and time, in the internal sense means an alteration of state.