9371. THE INTERNAL SENSE.

Verses 1-2. And He said unto Moses, Come up unto Jehovah, thou and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and bow yourselves afar off; and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah; and they shall not come near; and the people shall not come up with him. “And He said unto Moses,” signifies that which concerns the Word in general; “come up unto Jehovah,” signifies conjunction with the Lord; “thou and Aaron,” signifies the Word in the internal sense and the external sense; “Nadab and Abihu,” signifies doctrine from both senses; “and seventy of the elders of Israel,” signifies the chief truths of the church which are of the Word, or of doctrine, and which agree with good; “and bow yourselves afar off,” signifies humiliation and adoration from the heart, and then the influx of the Lord; “and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah,” signifies the conjunction and presence of the Lord through the Word in general; “and they shall not come near,” signifies no separate conjunction and presence; “and the people shall not come up with him,” signifies no conjunction whatever with the external apart from the internal.

1376. POSITION AND PLACE, AND ALSO DISTANCE AND TIME IN THE NEXT LIFE - continued

I have spoken frequently to spirits about the idea that place and distance with them are not anything real but only appear to be so, being nothing other than their states of thought and affection, which vary in the way place and distance do and which visually present themselves as such in the world of spirits. This is not so much the case with angels in heaven. They have no idea of place or of time, but only of states. Spirits however who cling to bodily and earthly ideas do not comprehend this because they imagine that everything really is exactly as they behold it. Such spirits can scarcely be led to believe otherwise than that they are living in the body, and refuse to be convinced that they are spirits. Thus they can scarcely be led to believe that any appearances or illusions are possible, desiring to live in illusions, and so they shut themselves off from grasping and acknowledging truths and goods, which are very far from being illusions. They have been shown time and again that change of place is merely an appearance, and also an illusion of the senses. In fact there are in the next life two kinds of changes of place. The first is that mentioned already, in which every spirit and angel in the Grand Man remains all the time in his own position; this is an appearance. The second is that in which spirits appear in a place when in fact they are not there at all; this is an illusion.