4574. About the hells of the inwardly deceitful and outwardly good

The Tongue

There are those who had outwardly appeared good, gentle, and dutiful in the world, but whose pleasure, which they had concealed within, had been inflicting harm on the neighbor in every possible way. Such people, like (Losche Bryggaren emot mig boende) ¹ , are not recognized by others. In the other life they also hold themselves aloft for a long time because outwardly they had been gentle and good. They did this among the simple that do not go into higher matters. Those outwardly good elevate themselves by the path toward the right where those are who were of the same nature. But they want others, especially those who are of such a nature, to harm other people. They sit there on the right at the side and are delighted by such things.

Spirits of this kind, let into a hell there, were engulfed by a cloud, some cast headlong into it, and this again and again, always followed by others. They are wicked demons. Those elevated by the former ones are of that nature. When thinking about matters of faith, because they had thought and believed something such, they force others, on whom they are acting, to put their tongue between their teeth, so that they will bite it and cut it off. It has been granted me to experience their attempt [to do] this many, many times so that I would know what they are like. They would have been happy if they had been able to utterly destroy me, for without a tongue I would be deprived of the ability to eat and also to speak, thus to associate with people. This is why their greatest passion is the passion for such things, and why their enjoyment increases in proportion to the magnitude of the harm. For two days now I have seen many thousands swallowed down into their new hell.

Poznámky pod čarou:

4129. 'And Laban pitched with his brothers in mount Gilead' means the state of the good existing to some extent in that joining together. This is clear from the representation of 'Laban' as the good now separated from the good represented by 'Jacob'; from the meaning of 'pitching' as the state involving that good (the phrase 'pitching his tent' is not used because it was not a state of holy love except insofar as the two kinds of good were to some extent so joined together); from the meaning of 'brothers' as the forms of good with which the good meant by 'Laban' is grouped together, dealt with above in 4121; and from the meaning of 'mount Gilead' as the first stage and the last of the joining together, dealt with above in 4117. From this it is evident that 'Laban pitched with his brothers on mount Gilead' means the state of the good existing to some extent in that joining together.

[2] Anything more that is embodied within the matters that have now been explained cannot be presented intelligibly in the same way except by reference to the occurrences which take place in the next life when the Lord links communities of spirits and angels to man or separates them from him. The actual process by which they are linked or separated is determined by the order as it exists there. The stages of this process have been described fully in this chapter, but because man has no knowledge of them at all it would be declaring mere arcana if they were to be explained individually. Some have been discussed above where the joining and the separation of communities residing with one who is to be regenerated have been the subject. But it is enough if one knows that the arcana of that process are contained here in the internal sense, so many and of such a nature in fact that not even a thousandth part can be explained fully and intelligibly.