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.

82. Verse 1 And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

These words are used to mean that the individual has now become spiritual to the point of being the sixth day. 'Heaven' is his internal man, and 'earth' his external. 'The host of them' are love, faith, and cognitions of them, which previously were meant by 'the great lights and the stars'. That the internal man is called 'heaven' and the external 'earth' becomes clear from the quotations from the Word given in the previous chapter, to which the following from Isaiah may be added,

I will make man (vir) more rare than fine gold, and man (homo) than the precious gold of Ophir. Therefore I will strike the heavens with terror, and the earth will be shaken out of its place. Isaiah 13:12-13.

And elsewhere in Isaiah,

You will forget Jehovah your Maker, who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth. But I will put My words in your mouth and hide you in the shadow of My hand, that I may stretch out heaven and lay the foundation of the earth. Isaiah 51:13, 16.

These quotations show that both heaven and earth have reference to man (homo). They refer, it is true, to the Most Ancient Church, but the more interior contents of the Word are such that whatever statement is made about the Church is a statement about the individual member of the Church. If he were not the Church, he could not be a part of the Church, just as anyone who is not a temple of the Lord cannot be that which is meant by a temple, namely the Church and heaven. This also is why the Most Ancient Church is called Man (a singular noun).