§147 the four quarters 81
d. The forehead corresponds to heavenly love, so in the Word the forehead refers to that love:
9936. The eye corresponds to our discernment, because discernment is inner sight: 2701 , 4410 ,
4526 , 9051 , 10569. So to lift one’s eyes and see means to discern, to perceive, and to notice: 2789 ,
2829 , 3198 , 3202 , 4083 , 4086 , 4339 , 5684.
A further extraordinary fact is that in heaven, no one is allowed to
stand behind anyone else and look at the back of his or her head. This
disturbs the infl ow of what is good and true from the Lord.
Angels see the Lord in one way, and the Lord sees angels in another. 145
Angels see the Lord with their eyes, while the Lord sees angels through
their foreheads. The reason for this is that the forehead corresponds to
love, and it is through love that the Lord fl ows into their volition and
makes himself visible to their minds, to which the eyes correspond.d
However, the regions in the heavens that make up the Lord’s heav- 146
enly kingdom differ from those in the heavens that make up the Lord’s
spiritual kingdom. This is because to the angels in his heavenly kingdom
the Lord looks like a sun, while to the angels in his spiritual kingdom he
looks like a moon, and the east is where the Lord is seen.
The distance between the sun and the moon is thirty degrees, and the
same alignment therefore holds true for the directions. The division of
heaven into two kingdoms called the heavenly kingdom and the spiritual
kingdom has been presented in its own chapter above (§§ 20 – 28 ), as has
the Lord’s looking like the sun in the heavenly kingdom and like the
moon in the spiritual kingdom (§ 118 ). Still, the directions are not ren-
dered uncertain by this, since spiritual angels cannot rise up to the level of
heavenly angels, nor the latter come down to the former (see § 35 above).
We can see from this what the Lord’s presence is like in the heavens: 147
it is everywhere, with every individual in the good and true qualities that
emanate from the Lord. So he is in angels in what is actually his own (as
noted in § 12 above).
Their sense of the Lord’s presence is in their deeper reaches. It is from
these that their eyes see, so he seems to be outside them because there is a
continuum. This enables us to see how we should understand the Lord’s
being in them and their being in the Lord, according to the Lord’s words,
Abide in me, and I [will abide] in you. (John 15 : 4 )And
Those who eat my fl esh and drink my blood abide in me and I in
them. (John 6 : 56 )