that the sun is borne
around the earth daily, and follows yearly the path of the ecliptic. So
long as this appearance is not confirmed it is an apparent truth,
according to which any one may think and speak; for he may say that the
sun rises and sets and thereby causes morning, midday, evening, and
night; also that the sun is now in such or such a degree of the ecliptic
or of its altitude, and thereby causes spring, summer, autumn, and
winter. But when this appearance is confirmed as the real truth, then
the confirmer thinks and utters a falsity springing from a fallacy. It
is the same with innumerable other appearances, not only in natural,
civil, and moral, but also in spiritual affairs.

109. It is the same with the distance of the sun of the spiritual world,
which sun is the first proceeding of the Lord's Divine Love and Divine
Wisdom. The truth is that there is no distance, but that the distance is
an appearance according to the reception of Divine Love and Wisdom by the
angels in their degree. That distances, in the spiritual world, are
appearances may be seen from what has been shown above (as in n. 7-9,
That the Divine is not in space; and in n. 69-72, That the Divine, apart
from space, fills all spaces). If there are no spaces, there are no
distances, or, what is the same, if spaces are appearances, distances
also are appearances, for distances are of space.

110. The sun of the spiritual world appears at a distance from the angels,
because they receive Divine Love and Divine Wisdom in the measure of
heat and light that is adequate to their states. For an angel, because
created and finite, cannot receive the Lord in the first degree of heat
and light, such as is in the sun; if he did he would be entirely consumed.
The Lord, therefore, is received by angels in a degree of heat and light
corresponding to their love and wisdom. The following may serve for
illustration. An angel of the lowest heaven cannot ascend to the angels
of the third heaven; for if he ascends and enters their heaven, he falls
into a kind of swoon, and his life as it were, strives with death; the
reason is that he has a less degree of love and wisdom, and the heat of
his love and the light of his wisdom are in the same degree as his love
and wisdom. What, then, would be the result if an angel were even to
ascend toward the sun, and come into its fire? On account of the
differences of reception of the Lord by the angels, the heavens also
appea