A company might have executives setting policy and strategy, engineers designing products, managers handling personnel and others handling various functions. They all do different things -- but if they're doing them with a shared underlying purpose, the company -- and the individuals in it -- will likely be successful. The Lord wants all human society to function in a similar way. We have different skills and individual loves, but if we all share a mutual love -- a love of serving others -- then society will function as one, will be a reflection of heaven and will be a good receptacle for the Lord's love. This can also happen within each of us, as we unify our talents and ideas around a central love. And in an abstract sense, it illustrates how a wide collection of varying ideas can be unified around a shared good intention. That is the kind of love pictured when “one” is used in the Bible, either as a specific number or in the sense of several people or objects “being one.” In more casual references -- when used to identify a specific person or object -- the meaning is relatively literal, and is connected to that person or object.

1997. 'I will multiply you more and more' means endless fruitfulness of the affection for truth. This becomes clear from the meaning of 'multiplying' as having reference to truth, dealt with in 43, 55, 913, 983. And because it refers to the Lord it means the endless fruitfulness of truth that flows from good, dealt with already in 1940. There are two types of affection - the affection for good and the affection for truth. The affection for good consists in doing good from a love of good, the affection for truth is doing good from a love of truth. At first glance these two types of affection seem to be identical, but they are quite distinct and separate from each other in essence as well as in origin. The affection for good, or doing good from a love of good, belongs strictly to the will, whereas the affection for truth, or doing good from a love of truth, belongs strictly to the understanding; thus these two types of affection are as distinct from each other as will and understanding. The affection for good springs from celestial love, but the affection for truth from spiritual love. The description 'affection for good' cannot be used except in reference to the celestial man, while 'affection for truth' is used in reference to the spiritual man. What the Celestial is and what the celestial man, and what the Spiritual or the spiritual man is, has been adequately shown in Volume One. The Most Ancient Church, which existed before the Flood, was stirred by the affection for good, but the Ancient Church, which existed after the Flood, was stirred by the affection for truth, for the former was a celestial Church, but the latter a spiritual Church. All angels in heaven are either celestial or spiritual. The celestial are stirred by the affection for good, the spiritual by the affection for truth. To the former the Lord appears as the Sun, to the latter however as the Moon, 1529-1531, 1838. The latter affection, that is, the affection for truth, the Lord united to the affection for good, which consists in doing good from a love of good, when He united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence. Consequently 'multiplying more and more' means endless fruitfulness of truth deriving from good.