154. The reason the Lord created the universe and everything in it by means of the spiritual world's sun is that this sun is the first emanation of divine love and wisdom, and as explained above (52-82), everything comes from divine love and wisdom.

There are three components of everything that has been created, no matter how large or how small it is: a purpose, a means, and a result. There is nothing created that lacks these three components. In the largest instance, the universe, these three components arise in the following pattern: the purpose of everything is in that sun that is the first emanation of divine love and wisdom; the means of everything is in the spiritual world; and the result of everything is in the physical world. I will describe below [167-172] how these three components occur in both first and last forms.

Since there is nothing created that lacks these three components, it follows that the universe and everything in it has been created by the Lord by means of the sun where the purpose of everything resides.

15. Being is not being unless it has expression, because prior to that it has no form, and if it has no form it has no character, and whatever has no character is not anything.

That which has expression as a result of being is united with the being by virtue of the fact that it is an expression of the being. The consequent effect is a union into one; and so it is that each mutually and reciprocally is the complement of the other, and that each is the all in all things of the other as it is in itself.

167. The goal of creation--that everything should return to the Creator and that there should be a union--becomes manifest in outermost forms. First of all, I need to say something about "ends." There are three, which follow in sequence: They are called the first end, the mediate end, and the final end; and they are also called the purpose, the means, and the result. These three must all be present in anything in order for it to be something, since no first end occurs without an intermediate end and a final one at the same time. This is the same as saying that no purpose occurs apart from its means and result, or no means by itself, without a purpose as its source and a result that contains it, or no result by itself without a means and a purpose.

You can see the truth of this if you consider that a purpose apart from its result or separated from its result is nothing that in fact comes into being, so it is nothing but a word. For a purpose effectively to be a purpose, that is, it must be defined, and it finds its definition in its result. That is where it is first called a purpose, because this is its purpose. It looks as though the active or effective element arose spontaneously, but this is an appearance caused by the fact that it is in its result. If it is separated from its result, though, it promptly dissipates.

We can therefore see that this trio of purpose, means, and result needs to be in every entity if it is to be anything.