124. The zones in the spiritual world are not created by the Lord as the sun, but they are created by the angels in accordance with their reception. We have said that angels live apart from each other, some in the eastern zone, some in the western zone, some in the southern zone, and some in the northern zone. We also said that those who live in the eastern zone possess a higher degree of love, those in the western zone a lower degree of love, those in the southern zone wisdom in a state of light, and those in the northern zone wisdom in a state of comparative darkness. This diversity in the regions of their abodes appears to be caused by the Lord as the sun, when in fact it is caused by the angels. The Lord is not present with a greater or lesser degree of love and wisdom in one angel than in another, or as the sun He is not present with a greater or lesser degree of warmth and light in one than in another, for He is everywhere the same. But He is not received by this or that angel in the same degree, and the difference in reception causes the angels to appear to themselves to be more or less distant from each other, and also to be situated variously in relation to the points of the compass. It follows from this that the zones in the spiritual world are simply reflections of the angels' differing degrees of reception of love and wisdom and so of warmth and light from the Lord as the sun. The fact of this is apparent from points we demonstrated above in nos. 108-112, showing that distances in the spiritual world are appearances.