268. Now to say how the Word allows people throughout all parts of the world to experience the presence of, and a connection to, the Lord and heaven. To the Lord the entire angelic heaven is like one person. The same is true for the church across the earth. (For heaven and the church actually appearing as a human, see Heaven and Hell 59-86). The church where the Word is read and where the Lord is therefore known is like the heart and the lungs in that human being. The Lord's heavenly kingdom is like the heart, and his spiritual kingdom is like the lungs. Just as all the other limbs, internal organs, and parts of the human body have life and continued existence because of these two fountains of life, so too all the people around the world who have a religion, worship one God, and live good lives have life and continued existence because the church is connected to the Lord and heaven through the Word. Non-Christians are in that human being and play the part of its limbs and internal organs outside the thorax that holds the heart and lungs. Non-Christians have life from the Lord through heaven because of the Word in the Christian church, just as the limbs and organs throughout the body have life because of the heart and lungs. There is also a similar exchange between them.

This is also the reason why Christians who read the Word make up the chest of that [giant] human being. They are in fact central among all people. Surrounding them are Catholics. Surrounding the Catholics are Muslims who acknowledge the Lord as the greatest prophet or the Son of God. Farther out than these are Africans. People and nations in the Middle East and the Indies make up the farthest circumference.

194. 1. What the spiritual meaning is. The spiritual meaning is not the meaning that comes to light from the Word's literal meaning when someone examines and explains the Word in order to support some dogma of the church. That meaning could be called "the literal and ecclesiastical" meaning of the Word. The spiritual meaning is not apparent in the literal meaning. It lies inside it the way our soul is in our body, or our intellect's thoughts are in our eyes, or our feelings of love are in our face.

The spiritual meaning is the primary thing that makes the Word spiritual, not only for people but also for angels. The Word communicates with the heavens through that meaning. Because the Word is inwardly spiritual, it was written entirely in correspondences. Anything that is written in correspondences has an outermost meaning that is written in a style like the one used by the prophets, by the Gospel writers, and in the Book of Revelation. Although that style appears poor, nevertheless it conceals within itself divine wisdom and all angelic wisdom.

For an explanation of correspondence, go to the work Heaven and Hell, published in London in 1758, and look at the treatment of the correspondence of everything in heaven with everything in the human being (87-102) and the correspondence of heaven with everything earthly (103-115). You will also be able to look more extensively at correspondences in the examples from the Word I am going to present below [196-199].