24. Verse 6 And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let there be a distinguishing of the waters from the waters.

After the Spirit of God, which is the Lord's mercy, has brought out into the daylight cognitions of truth and good, and has shed the light of dawn to reveal that the Lord does exist, and that He is good itself and truth itself, and that no good or truth exists except from the Lord, a distinction is at that point made between the internal man and the external man, and so between cognitions which reside with the internal man and the facts which belong to the external man. The internal man is called 'an expanse, and the cognitions residing with the internal man are called 'the waters above the expanse', while the facts belonging to the external man are called 'the waters below the expanse'.

[2] Until his regeneration starts a person is not aware of even the existence of the internal man, let alone the identity of the internal man. Submerged in bodily and worldly concerns he imagines there is no difference between the two. Furthermore he has submerged in those same concerns the things that belong to the internal man and has made one thorough obscurity out of things that are distinct and separate. For this reason it is first said, 'Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters', and then, 'Let there be a distinguishing of the waters from the waters', and not a distinguishing of the waters. But this is followed immediately by the statement, Verses 7-8, And God made the expanse and He made a distinction between the waters that were under the expanse and the waters that were above the expanse; and it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven.

[3] The second thing therefore that a person notices when being regenerated is that he is starting to become aware of the existence of the internal man, or that what reside in the internal man are goods and truths which are the Lord's alone. And since the external man during regeneration is such as still imagines that he is the source of the good deeds he performs, or of the truth he utters, and since such a person, by means of them, is led by the Lord to do good and to speak truth as if they were his own, therefore the identification of those under the expanse comes first, and the identification of those above the expanse follows. It is also a heavenly arcanum that the Lord uses those things that are man's own - both his illusions of the senses and his desires - to lead and direct him towards the things that are goods and truths. Every single movement of regeneration is accordingly a progression from evening to morning - from external man to internal, that is, from earth to heaven. This is why the expanse, or internal man, is now called 'heaven'.

7999. 'A purchase paid for with silver' means who is in possession of some spiritual truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'a purchase' as that which is acquired and made one's own, dealt with in 4397, 4487, 5374, 5397, 5406, 5410, 5426; and from the meaning of 'silver' as truth, dealt with in 1551, 2954, 5658, at this point spiritual truth since a slave who was bought means in the internal sense the natural man, and the master who bought him therefore means the spiritual man. No one can know what this really implies unless he knows in what way the spiritual buys the natural for itself, that is, acquires and makes it its own. When a person is being regenerated his internal and external, that is, his spiritual and natural, are at variance with each other at first; for his spiritual desires the things of heaven, whereas his natural desires those of the world. But at this time the spiritual is constantly entering the natural and bringing it into agreement. This is done by means of truth; and what the spiritual brings into agreement with itself within the natural is said to be 'bought with silver', that is, acquired and made its own by means of truth.