3861. 'And she called his name Reuben' means the essential nature of it, which is described. This is clear from the meaning of 'name' and 'calling the name' as the essential nature, dealt with in 144, 145, 1754, 1896, 2009, 2724, 3006, 3421. That nature itself is described by the statement, 'Because Jehovah has seen my affliction, for now my husband will love me', the literal meaning of the name Reuben. Spiritually however all names in the Word mean real things, as has been shown often, see 1224, 1264, 1876, 1888; and among me ancients when a name was given it meant some state, 340, 1946, 2643, 3422. Here it will be seen that the names of all the sons of Jacob mean the universal attributes of the Church. Also one specific universal attribute has been combined within each name, but what that attribute is no one can possibly know unless he knows the internal sense embodied in the words from which each son's name is derived. That is, he needs to know the internal sense embodied in 'has seen' from which Reuben is derived, and in 'has heard' from which Simeon is derived, and in 'has clung to' from which Levi is derived, and in 'to confess' from which Judah is derived, and so on with all the other sons.

3345. From this one can see that a range of interior forms of communication exists, yet these are such that one form springs from another in that range of them and one exists within another next to it. The nature of the communication used by man is well known, as also is his thought in which that form of communication originates and whose analytical workings are such as cannot possibly be examined closely. The communication, and the thought in which it originates, of the good spirits, or the angels of the first heaven, are more interior, containing things yet more wonderful and unexaminable. The communication, and again the thought in which it originates, of the angels of the second heaven are still more interior, containing yet more perfect and indescribable things, while the communication, and yet again the thought in which it originates, of the angels of the third heaven are inmost, containing things totally indescribable. And although all these forms of communication are such that they appear to be different and diverse, they nevertheless make a single whole since one gives form to the next and one is present within the next. But that which occurs in a more external form is representative of that which is interior to it. Anyone who does not think beyond worldly and bodily things cannot believe these things, and therefore he imagines that the interior things with him are nothing, when in fact the interior things with him constitute everything, while those that are exterior, that is, worldly and bodily, in which he makes everything to consist, are by contrast scarcely anything.