313. Many of the scholars of the Christian world are dumbfounded when they find themselves after death in bodies, wearing clothes, and in houses the way they were in this world. When they call to mind what they had thought about life after death, the soul, spirits, and heaven and hell, they are embarrassed and say that they had been thinking nonsense. They say that people of simple faith had been far wiser than they. Some scholars were examined who had completely convinced themselves in this kind of belief and attributed everything to nature. It turned out that their inner natures were completely closed off, while their more outward natures were open. This meant that they were not looking toward heaven but toward the world, and therefore toward hell; for to the extent that our deeper natures are opened, we look toward heaven, while to the extent that they are closed and our more outward natures are open, we look toward hell. Our deeper levels are formed for the acceptance of heaven and our more outward ones for acceptance of the world; and if we accept the world without accepting heaven at the same time, we are accepting hell. ¹

Voetnoten:

15. Being is not being unless it has expression, because prior to that it has no form, and if it has no form it has no character, and whatever has no character is not anything.

That which has expression as a result of being is united with the being by virtue of the fact that it is an expression of the being. The consequent effect is a union into one; and so it is that each mutually and reciprocally is the complement of the other, and that each is the all in all things of the other as it is in itself.