Down" is used many different ways, and its spiritual meaning in the Bible is highly dependent on context. Phrases like "bowing down," "lying down" and "falling down" are defined primarily by "bowing," "lying" and "falling"; there is also a great difference between a person descending, the Lord sending fire from heaven and someone handling an object, to offer a few examples. In a very general sense, though, "down" indicates a lowering from more internal spiritual states to more external ones. That's why the journey is described as going "down" to Egypt from Canaan, and people from all quarters go "up" to Jerusalem. It's also why the Lord comes "down" to us, which generally indicates a state of judgment.

912. And the city was pure gold, like clear glass. This symbolically means that everything connected with the New Church therefore embodies the goodness of love flowing in together with light out of heaven from the Lord.

The city, that is, Jerusalem, means the Lord's New Church in respect to everything in it or within its wall. Gold symbolizes the goodness of love from the Lord, as will be seen next. Being like clear glass symbolizes its having Divine wisdom shining clearly through; and because that wisdom appears in heaven as light and flows in from the Lord as the sun, being like pure glass symbolizes its flowing in together with light out of heaven from the Lord.

In no. 908 above we showed that everything connected with heaven and the church springs from the goodness of love, and that the goodness of love comes from the Lord. Now we say here that the city's looking as though it were pure gold means, symbolically, that everything connected with the New Church, the New Jerusalem, embodies the goodness of love from the Lord. Yet because the goodness of love does not exist by itself, divorced from the truths of wisdom, but for it to be the goodness of love must take form and does take form through truths of wisdom, therefore the city is said here to be pure gold, like clear glass. For the goodness of love without truths of wisdom does not have any character, because it lacks form. Its form accords with the truths it has flowing in in their order and connection together with the goodness of love from the Lord, thus in accord with its reception in a person. We say, in a person, but we mean not that the truths are a person's, but that they are the Lord's in him.

It is apparent from this now that the city's being pure gold, like clear glass, symbolically means that everything connected with the New Church therefore embodies the goodness of love flowing in with light out of heaven from the Lord.