8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. -Genesis 2:8 Bible, King James Version
Arcana Coelestia, by Emanuel Swedenborg, [1749-56], tr. by John F. Potts [1905-10], at sacred-texts.com
Verse 8. And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. By a "garden" is signified intelligence; by "Eden" love; by the "east" the Lord; consequently by the "garden of Eden eastward" is signified the intelligence of the celestial man, which flows in from the Lord through love.
...In the inmost sense, which is also the universal sense, it is the Lord's kingdom, and the heaven in which man is placed when he has become celestial. His state then is such that he is with the angels in heaven, and is as it were one among them; for man has been so created that while living in this world he may at the same time be in heaven. In this state all his thoughts and ideas of thoughts, and even his words and actions, are open, even from the Lord, and contain within them what is celestial and spiritual; for there is in every man the life of the Lord, which causes him to have perception...
That the Lord is the "east" also appears from the Word, as in Ezekiel: He brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh the way of the east, and behold the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east; and His voice was as the voice of many waters, and the earth shone with His glory (Ezek. 43:1-2, 4). It was in consequence of the Lord's being the "east" that a holy custom prevailed in the representative Jewish Church, before the building of the temple, of turning their faces toward the east when they prayed.
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