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'.

1876. The names of men, kingdoms, or cities that occur in the Word, as with the expressions of human speech, disappear at the very threshold of their progress upwards; for those names are earthly, bodily, and material, being things of which souls entering the next life gradually divest themselves and of which those entering heaven do so altogether. Angels do not retain the least idea of any person, nor therefore of his name. What Abram is, what Isaac is, or Jacob, they do not know any longer. Instead they form an idea for themselves from the things that are represented and meant by those characters in the Word. Names and expressions are like dust or like scales that fall off when they enter heaven. From this it becomes clear that names in the Word mean nothing other than real things. On these matters I have spoken many times to angels, who have informed me fully regarding the truth. The speech that spirits employ among themselves does not consist of verbal expressions but of ideas, like those comprising human thought without words, and is therefore the universal language of all languages. But when they speak to man their speech falls into the expressions of human language, as stated in 1635, 1637, 1639.

[2] When discussing this matter with spirits I have been given to say that when they are conversing among themselves they are not able to utter one single word of human language, still less utter any name. Astonished by this some went away and tried to do so, but on returning they said that they had been unable to pronounce them because those words were so grossly material that they belonged below their own sphere, for such words were produced by an audible emission of air articulated by organs of the body, or else by means of an influx into the same organs by an internal route leading to the organ of hearing. From this it also became perfectly clear that no part of any expression which occurs in the Word was able to pass over to spirits. Still less could it pass over to angelic spirits, whose speech is even more universal, 1642. And least of all could it pass over to angels, 1643, with whom nothing remains of even the first ideas that spirits possess; instead angels have spiritual truths and celestial goods. Such truths and goods are varied in an indescribable manner in their least forms - which are continuous and knit together in a harmonious sequence - together with the first springs of representatives whose very great delightfulness and beauty flow from the happiness belonging to mutual love, and whose happiness flows from all their delight and beauty, because the Lord's life is inspired into them