Instead, spiritual reality is structured on the basis of spiritual state, or the loves and thoughts of angels. These loves and thoughts connect in chains of cause and effect, which angels experience much as we experience time. One thought flows into another on the spiritual level, and angels sense that progression the same way we sense the progression of one moment flowing into another. And when angels have thoughts and feelings that are similar, they experience a closeness that is very much the same as our experience of physical closeness; their idea of “space” is the variation in thoughts and affections held by spirits throughout the spiritual world.When the Bible describes something as “after” something else, then, the spiritual meaning has to do with the progression of spiritual states; it is a new spiritual state emerging from the one before it. And since higher states flow into lower states, the things coming “after” tend to be the lower, more external ones. For instance, the deep, internal desire to be good to others flows of its own accord into specific ideas of specific good things we can do. Those specific ideas, then, would be “after” the desire to be good.According to Swedenborg, time and space don’t exist in spiritual reality; they are purely natural things that exist only on the physical plane. This means that one spiritual thing can’t happen “after” another spiritual thing in time, because there is no time. And one spiritual thing can’t follow “after” another in space because there is no space.

10550. 'And looked after Moses until he had entered the tent' means that they see the external aspect of the Word, the Church, and worship, but that it goes beyond what they are capable of understanding. This is clear from the meaning of 'looking after Moses' as seeing the external aspect or outward sense of the Word (the Word is meant by 'Moses', as above in 10549, and seeing its outward sense by 'looking after him'; for what is in front means what is inside, and what is at the back means what is outside, so that seeing Jehovah's back parts and not His face means seeing what is external and not what is internal, which is dealt with at the final verse of the present chapter); and from the meaning of 'until he had entered the tent' as its going beyond what they are capable of understanding, for when he went into it he was no longer visible.