9606. 'On the edge of the one curtain at the end in the joining-place' means of one sphere to the other, that is to say, the joining together of the two. This is clear from the meaning of 'the edge of the curtain at the end in the joining-place' as the place where one ends and the other begins, thus the boundary where the two come together. The reason why a sphere is what is meant is that in heaven spheres come together; for there are spheres that go out from each angelic community in heaven, and from each angel in a community. These spheres from each one emanate from the life of their affections for truth and good; and they spread a long way out. This explains why the character of spirits and angels is recognizable when they are a long way off. Those spheres are what bind angels and angelic communities together and they are also what split them apart; for similar spheres, that is, similar affections for truth and good, come together, and dissimilar ones move apart. But see what has been shown already about those spheres in 1048, 1053, 1316, 1504-1520, 1695, 2401, 2489, 4464, 5179, 6206 (end), 6598-6613, 7454, 8630, 8794, 8797, 9490-9492, 9498, 9534. Whether you say the angels and angelic communities, or the truth and good, from which the spheres emanate it amounts to the same thing, for the spheres are emanations from affections for truth and good, by virtue of which the angels are angels from the Lord. It should be recognized that to the extent that these spheres originate in the Lord they come together, but to the extent that they originate in the self of an angel they move apart. From this it is evident that the Lord alone brings them together.

6206. To take the subject further, it should be recognized that all evil flows in from hell and all good from the Lord by way of heaven. The reason however why evil becomes a person's own is that he believes and convinces himself that he thinks and practises it all by himself. In this way he makes it his own. But if he believed what is really so, it would not be evil but good from the Lord that became his own. For if he believed what is really so he would think, the instant evil flowed in, that it came from the evil spirits present with him; and since that was what he thought the angels could ward that evil off and repel it. For influx from angels takes place into what a person knows and believes, not what he does not know or believe; there is nowhere else for it to become firmly established than in something the person knows or believes.

[2] When a person in that way makes some evil his own he acquires the sphere that is a product of that evil. This sphere is what the spirits from hell who have a sphere of like evil around them associate themselves with, for like is linked to like. The spiritual sphere existing with man or spirit is an emanation from the life which belongs to his loves, from which his character is recognized from afar. Their spheres are what determine the ways in which all are joined to one another in the next life, and the ways in which communities are joined too. They also determine the separations that take place, for contrary spheres conflict with and repel one another. Consequently the spheres produced by the loves of what is evil are all in hell, while the spheres produced by the loves of what is good are all in heaven, that is, those dwelling in such spheres are there.