1276. In regard to spirits' position in the world of spirits and angels' position in heaven: Angels are on the Lord's right, evil spirits on his left. In front of him live people of a middling sort, at his back live the malicious. Overhead are the vain and ambitious, underfoot are hells that provide a counterpart to them. So all individuals have their own position relative to the Lord, in every quarter, at every height, on the horizontal plane and the vertical and at every angle in between. Everyone's place remains fixed, never changing to eternity. 1
[2] The heavens in the other world make up what is essentially a single human being, which is therefore called the universal human, and everything in us corresponds to [something in] that human. The correspondence will be discussed later, with the Lord's divine mercy. 2
As a result, everything positions itself in a similar way around every angel and within every person on earth to whom the Lord opens heaven. The Lord's presence carries this consequence with it. It would not be so if the Lord were not omnipresent in heaven.
Footnotes:
1. Contrast §967, in which it is suggested that spirits are allowed out of hell after punishment. See also note 1 in §967. [SS]
2. Swedenborg's major discussion of the correspondence between human anatomy and this universal human occurs in §§3624-3649, 3741-3750, 3883-3896, 4039-4055, 4218-4228, 4318-4331, 4403-4421, 4523-4534, 4622-4634, 4652-4660, 4791-4806, 4931-4953, 5050-5062, 5171-5190, 5377-5396, 5552-5573. [LHC]