404. We take on a completely different condition if love for the world or for wealth constitutes the head, meaning that this is our dominant love. Then love for heaven leaves the head and goes into exile in the body. People who are in this state prefer the world to heaven. They do indeed worship God, but they do so from a love that is merely earthly, a love that leads them to take credit for all their acts of worship. They also do good things for their neighbor, but they do them to get something back in return.

In the case of people like this, heavenly things are like the clothes in which they strut about, garments that we see as shining but angels see as drab. When love for the world inhabits our inner self and love for heaven inhabits our outer self, then love for the world dims all things related to the church and hides them as if they were behind a piece of cloth.

Love for the world or for wealth comes in many forms, however. It gets worse the closer it approaches to miserliness. At the point of miserliness the love for heaven becomes dark. This love also gets worse the closer it approaches to arrogance and a sense of superiority over others based on love for oneself. It is not as detrimental when it tends toward wasteful indulgence. It is even less damaging if its goal is to have the finest things the world has to offer, like a mansion, fine furniture, fashionable clothing, servants, horses and carriages in grand style, and things like that. With any love, its quality depends on the goal that it focuses on and intends to reach.

Love for the world and for wealth is like a dark crystal that suffocates light and breaks it only into colors that are dull and faded. It is like fog or cloudiness that blocks the rays of the sun. It is also like wine in its first stages - the liquid tastes sweet, but it upsets your stomach.

From heavens point of view, people like this look hunchbacked, walking with their head bent down looking at the ground. When they lift their head toward the sky, they strain their muscles and quickly go back to looking downward. The ancient people who were part of the church called people of this kind "Mammons. " The Greeks called them "Plutos. "

173. The idea of three gods is impossible to wipe out just by orally confessing one God, because it has been planted in our memory since childhood. We all think on the basis of what is in our memory.

The human memory is like the rumen that some birds and animals have. As these creatures go through the process of getting nourishment from their food, they first put their food in the rumen. They take it back out several times, and then put it in the main area of their stomach, where the food is digested and dispensed to serve all their body's functions. The human intellect is like the main area of the stomach; the human memory is like the rumen.

Anyone can see that the idea of three divine persons who existed from eternity, which is the same as the idea of three gods, cannot be wiped out just by orally confessing one God. Just look at the following piece of evidence: it has not been wiped out yet. There are famous people who do not want it to be wiped out, who insist that the three divine persons are one God but stubbornly deny that because God is one, he is also one person. Surely all wise people, though, think to themselves that "person" here does not mean person at all. It means the attribution of some quality. Which quality exactly, we do not know. Because we do not know, the concept of three gods stays sown in our memory from childhood like the root of a tree in the ground. If the tree is cut down, a new shoot appears.

[2] My friend, do not just cut down that tree; dig out the root as well. Then plant your garden with trees that bear good fruit. Make sure the idea of three gods is not stuck in your mind as your mouth says "one God" without any accompanying mental picture. If the intellect above your memory is thinking three gods at the same time as the intellect below your memory is making your mouth say one God, your intellect is like some clown on a stage who can play two parts at once. He switches from one part to the other, saying something in one role and contradicting it in the other, and in the argument calling his one self wise and his other self demented. Eventually he will stand in the middle looking both ways and thinking neither of them is anything. Likewise, if there is not one God and there are not three, then there is no God. This is the sole source of the materialist philosophy predominant today.

In heaven no one can even mention a trinity of persons, each of whom is individually God. The heavenly atmosphere itself in which thoughts travel in waves, as sound travels through air, works against it. Only hypocrites there can get away with it, but in the atmosphere of heaven their speaking has a bad sound like grinding teeth, or it squawks like a crow trying to sing like a songbird.

In fact, I have heard from heaven that using oral confession of one God to wipe out a belief in a trinity of gods (when that belief has been planted in the mind with supporting evidence) is as impossible as it would be to pass a whole tree through its own seed or to pass a man's whole chin through a single hair of his beard.