137. It says in John,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word: all things were made by means of him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of humankind. He was in the world, and the world was made by means of him. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory. (John 1:1, 3-4, 10, 14)

It is clear that the Lord is the one who is meant by "the Word," since it says that the Word was made flesh. Precisely what is meant by "the Word," though, is not yet known and must therefore be stated. The Word in this passage is the divine truth that is in the Lord and from the Lord, ¹ so here it is also called the light, which is divine truth, as has been shown earlier in this chapter. Now we need to explain the statement that all things were made and created by means of divine truth.

[2] In heaven, it is divine truth that possesses all power, and apart from it there is no power whatever. ² All angels are called "powers" because of divine truth, and are powers to the extent that they are recipients or vessels of it. Through it they prevail over the hells and over all who oppose them. A thousand enemies there cannot bear one ray of heavenly light, which is divine truth. Since angels are angels because of their acceptance of divine truth, it follows that all heaven is from this source and no other, since heaven is made up of angels.

[3] People cannot believe that this kind of power is inherent in divine truth if the only concept of truth they have has to do with thought or speech, which have no power in them except to the extent that other people concede it by being obedient. There is an intrinsic power within divine truth, though, power of such nature that by means of it heaven, the world, and everything in them was created.

We can illustrate the fact that this kind of power is inherent in divine truth by two comparisons - by the power of what is true and good in us, and by the power of light and warmth from the sun in our world.

By the power of what is true and good in us: Everything we do, we do out of our discernment and intent. Out of our intent, we act by means of what is good, and out of our discernment by means of what is true. In fact, all the elements of our volition are related to what is good, and all the elements of our discernment are related to what is true. ³ On this basis, then, we set our whole body in motion and a thousand things there rush to do our bidding of their own accord. We can see from this that our whole body is formed for obedience to what is good and true and therefore from what is good and true.

[4] By the power of light and warmth from the sun in our world: Everything that grows in our world - things like trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, fruits, and seeds - arises only by means of the warmth and light of the sun. So we can see what kind of productive power is inherent in that warmth and light. What about the divine light that is divine truth, then, and the divine warmth that is divine good, the source from which heaven comes into being and consequently the world as well, since as we have shown above, it is through heaven that the world comes into being?

This enables us to determine how to understand the statement that all things were made by means of the Word, and that without him nothing was made that was made, and further that the world was made by means of him, namely that this was accomplished by means of divine truth from the Lord. ⁴

This is also why in the book of creation it first mentions light and then the things that arise from light (Genesis 1:3-4). It is also why everything in all heaven and earth has to do with what is good and true and to their union if it is to be anything at all. ⁵

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151. The opposite holds for the people who are in the hells. The people there do not focus on the Lord as the sun or the moon, but look away from the Lord toward that dark object that occupies the place of our world's sun and the gloomy object that occupies the place of earth's moon. The ones called demons look toward the dark object in our sun's place, and the ones called spirits toward the gloomy object in our moon's place. ¹ As explained in 122 above, the sun of our world and earth's moon are not visible in the spiritual world, but in place of our sun there is something dark opposite heaven's sun and something gloomy opposite heaven's moon. This means that hell's inhabitants have directions opposite to those of heaven. Their east is where they see that dark or gloomy object and their west is where heaven's sun is. Their south is to their right and their north to their left, no matter which way they turn their bodies. Nothing else is possible for them, because the whole tendency of their deeper natures, their whole orientation therefore, aims and strives in this direction. On the fact that love is what determines the tendency of our deeper natures and therefore the orientation of everyone's actions in the other life, see 143. The love of people in the hells is a love for oneself and for the world, these loves being what is meant by the sun of this world and earth's moon (see 122). Further, these loves are opposite to love for the Lord and love for one's neighbor. ² This is why they turn toward the darkness, away from the Lord.

The people who are in the hells also live arranged according to the cardinal directions. The ones who are obsessed with evils that arise from love for themselves are along the east-west axis, and the ones who are obsessed with falsifications for the sake of evil are along the south-north axis. There will be more about them later, though, where we discuss the hells.

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