Heaven and its Wonders and HellSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Heaven and its Wonders and Hell
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Future life -- Christianity -- Early work to 1800; Heaven -- Christianity; Hell -- Christianity
362. But the lot of the rich that have not believed in the Divine,
and have cast out of their minds the things pertaining to heaven and
the church, is the opposite of this. Such are in hell, where filth,
misery, and want exist; and into these riches that are loved as an
end are changed; and not only riches, but also their very uses, which
are either a wish to live as they like and indulge in pleasures, and
to have opportunity to give the mind more fully and freely to
shameful practices, or a wish to rise above others whom they despise.
Such riches and such uses, because they have nothing spiritual, but
only what is earthly in them, become filthy; for a spiritual purpose
in riches and their uses is like a soul in the body, or like the
light of heaven in moist ground; and such riches and uses become
putrid as a body does without a soul, or as moist ground does without
the light of heaven. Such are those that have been led and drawn away
from heaven by riches.
363. Every man's ruling affection or love remains with him after
death, nor is it rooted out to eternity, since a man's spirit is
wholly what his love is, and what is unknown, the body of every
spirit and angel is the outward form of his love, exactly
corresponding to his inward form, which is the form of his
disposition and mind; consequently the quality of his spirit is known
from his face, movements, and speech. While a man is living in the
world the quality of the spirit would be known if he had not learned
to counterfeit in his face, movements, and speech what is not his
own. All this shows that man remains to eternity such as his ruling
affection or love is. It has been granted me to talk with some who
lived seventeen hundred years ago, and whose lives are well known
from writings of that time, and it was found that the same love still
rules them as when they were on the earth. This makes clear also that
the love of riches, and of uses from riches, remains with everyone to
eternity, and that it is exactly the same as the love acquired in the
world, yet with the difference that in the case of those who devoted
their riches to good uses riches are changed in the other world into
delights which are in accord with the uses performed; while in the
case of those who devoted their riches to evil uses riches are turned
into mere filth, in which they then take the same delight as they did
in the world in their riches devoted to evil uses. Such then take
delight in filth because filthy pleasures and shameful acts, which
had been the uses to which they had devoted their riches, and also
avarice, which is a love of riches without regard to use, correspond
to filth. Spiritual filth is nothing else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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