852. [Author's] Index to the Accounts of Memorable Occurrences

16-17: I heard some people who had recently arrived in the spiritual world talking among themselves about three divine persons from eternity. Then one of them who had been in a leadership position in the church during his life in the physical world proudly presented the views he had formed of that great mystery. He said that his opinion had been and still was that the three divine persons sit on exalted thrones in heaven. God the Father sits on a throne made of pure gold and has a scepter in his hand. God the Son sits to his right on a throne of pure silver and has a crown on his head. And God the Holy Spirit sits on a throne of dazzling crystal and holds a dove in his hand - the same form he took when Christ was baptized. Surrounding them are three tiers of hanging lamps glittering with precious stones. At quite a distance from this inner circle stand countless angels, all adoring and glorifying them. The church leader also spoke of how the Holy Spirit enacts faith, purification, and justification in people. He said that many of his colleagues in the clergy agreed with his take on this subject; he believed that because I was a layman, I too would put my faith in his views.

When I was given the opportunity to reply, however, I said that ever since I was a little child I had cherished the idea of one God. I explained to him what the Trinity truly is and what the Word really means when it speaks of God's throne, scepter, and crown. I added that believing in three divine persons from eternity inevitably leads to believing in three gods. Yet in reality the divine essence is indivisible.

25-26: A conversation among angels about God, to the effect that his divine essence is the underlying divine reality in itself, not from itself, and is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. The angels also said that God has no specific location, although he is with those who are in specific locations, and that his divine love is visible to angels as a sun. The essence of the heat from that sun is love, and the essence of the light from that sun is wisdom.

The three emanating divine activities of creating, redeeming, and regenerating are activities of the one only God, not activities of three separate gods.

35: At one point I was struck to think of the vast number of people who are convinced that nature is the source of all things and therefore that nature created the universe. In a lecture hall that contained people like this, an ingenious person and I debated three topics: (1) whether nature comes from life or life comes from nature; (2) whether the center comes from the expanse or the expanse comes from the center; and (3) the center and the expanse of nature and of life. "The center of nature" meant the sun in the physical world; "the expanse of nature" meant the physical world as a whole. "The center of life" meant the sun in the spiritual world, and "the expanse of life" meant the spiritual world as a whole. We vigorously debated the two sides of these questions; eventually it became clear which was the truth.

48: I was taken to an outdoor arena used for discussing issues of wisdom. Angelic spirits from all four directions who had gathered there were told by angels to discuss three mysteries of wisdom:

(1) What is the image of God and what is the likeness of God?

(2) Why are human beings born without any knowledge that relates to any love they have? Why are animals and birds born with knowledge related to every love they have?

(3) What does the tree of life mean and what does the tree of the knowledge of good and evil mean? The spirits were told to connect their responses into a single statement and give it to the angels from heaven. The group did so, and the angels approved of the resulting statement.

71: I heard a sound like ocean waves coming from evil spirits just above hell. It was a riot on the part of people who had heard from above that God Almighty restricted himself to following the divine design. One spirit came up from below and sharply challenged me regarding this topic. He said that because God is omnipotent he is not restricted to following some divine design. He asked me to tell him more about this divine design, so I said that

(1) God is the divine design itself;

(2) he created humankind on the basis of his design and in keeping with it, and built that design into us;

(3) he created our rational minds in imitation of the divine design in the whole spiritual world, and our bodies in imitation of the divine design in the whole physical world;

(4) as a result, it is a law of the divine design that we are to rule our microcosm or physical-world-in-miniature from our microheaven or spiritual-world-in-miniature, just as God rules the macrocosm or physical world from his macroheaven or spiritual world;

(5) there are many laws of the divine design that follow from this, and I mentioned a few of them to him. The account includes a description of what happened to those spirits afterward.

72: A debate among some people from Holland and England in the spiritual world concerning predestination and the assignment of Christ's merit. One side asked why God in his omnipotence does not assign his Son's justice to all people and redeem them all. Since he is omnipotent, he certainly has the power to turn all satans of hell into angels of heaven. He could turn Lucifer, the dragon, and all the goats into archangels if he wanted to. What would it take except a little word to that effect? The other side maintained that God is the divine design itself. God cannot act against the laws of his own design, because acting against them would be acting against himself. The account includes a number of lively points from the debate.

73: Afterward I spoke with others who believed in predestination, who came to that view through their notion of God's omnipotence or absolute power. Otherwise, they felt, God's power would be less than the power of monarchs on worldly thrones, who can turn the laws of justice in another direction as easily as they turn the palms of their hands and who have the absolute power of an Octavian Augustus and also the absolute power of a Nero. My answer to them was that God created the world and everything in it from himself as the divine design. Therefore he endowed everything with its own design. There are as many laws of his design as there are truths in the Word. Then I listed several laws of the divine design and mentioned what God does as his part and what we do as ours. Those laws cannot be changed, because God is the divine design itself. We have been created as an image of his divine design.

74: I talked with a gathering of clergy and lay people about divine omnipotence. They said that omnipotence was limitless and that the idea of a limited omnipotence makes no sense. I responded that it makes perfect sense for God to act all-powerfully in following the laws of justice and judgment in his actions. In fact, we read in David, "Justice and judgment are the support of your throne" (Psalms 89:14). It makes perfect sense for God to act all-powerfully in following the laws of love and wisdom. What makes no sense is to think that God could act against the laws of justice and love, which would not be acting with judgment or with wisdom. Yet the faith that the church is teaching nowadays entails such nonsense; for example, the notion that God could justify unjust people and bestow on godless people all the gifts of salvation and all the rewards of life. The account includes further details about the faith of today and about omnipotence.

76: One day when I was meditating on how God created the universe, I was taken up in the spirit and brought to some wise people. They expressed to me their frustration with stubbornly persistent ideas they had formed while in the physical world. One idea was that the universe had been created out of chaos. Another was that the universe had been created out of nothing. Yet these ideas obscure, twist, and interfere with one's ability to meditate on how God created the universe. They asked for my perspective on this topic. I explained that it is futile to draw conclusions (and any such conclusions will be seriously flawed) about the creation of the universe without first knowing several facts: There are two worlds, a spiritual world and a physical world, and each world has its own sun. The sun in the spiritual world is pure love; God is within that sun. All things that are spiritual, and are therefore substantial in essence, come from that sun. The sun in the physical world is pure fire. All things that are physical, and are therefore material in essence, come from this sun. Knowing these things allows us to conclude that God created the universe and to learn how he did it. I gave them a very general sketch of the stages of creation.

77: Some satans from hell longed to talk with angels from heaven in order to convince them that everything comes from nature and that God is only a word, unless it means nature. They were given permission to ascend. Some angels came down from heaven into the world of spirits to hear what they had to say. Once they spotted the angels, the satans hurried furiously toward them and said, "You are called angels because you believe there is a God and that nature is nothing in comparison. Yet what you believe runs contrary to all the evidence of the senses. Have any of your own five senses ever detected anything other than nature?" The satans said these and many other harsh things.

The angels then brought back to the satans' remembrance that they were now alive after their own death, although they had not believed such a thing was possible. The angels showed them the magnificent and dazzling things that exist in heaven, and pointed out that such things exist in heaven because all the people there believe in God. Then they showed them the hideous and filthy things that exist in hell, and pointed out that such things exist in hell because all the people there believe in nature [alone]. By seeing the contrast, the satans were convinced for the time being that there is a God and that he created nature. Nevertheless, as they sank back down, their love for evil returned and closed off their intellect at the top. As a result they came back into their original belief that everything comes from nature and nothing comes from God.

78: Through a living experience of a particular instance of creation, I was shown by angels how the whole universe was created. Taken up into heaven, I had the opportunity to see things of every kind from the animal kingdom, things of every kind from the plant kingdom, and things of every kind from the mineral kingdom; all these were exactly the same as their counterparts from those three kingdoms in the physical world. Yet the angels said that all the things I had seen were created by God instantaneously. I was also told that what is created persists as long as the angels' thinking is occurring in an inward state of love and faith. This instantaneous creation bears witness to the fact that similar things were created in a similar way in the physical world. The sole difference is that in the physical world, spiritual things are covered over with material substances; this covering has been provided by God for the sake of having one generation follow another, in order to perpetuate what was created. Therefore the creation of the physical universe was similar to what happens at every moment in heaven. Harmful and disgusting things in the three kingdoms of nature (the account gives specific examples) were not created by God but came into existence along with hell.

79: A conversation with some people who had been well-respected philosophers when they were in the world. The topic was how the universe was created. They expressed the ideas they had formed during their earthly lives. One said that nature created itself. Another said that nature combined its elements to form vortices. The earth was the result of collisions between these vortices. A third countered that nature created itself out of a chaos that occupied a large portion of the universe. First, purer elements broke out of the chaos to form the sun and the stars; then less pure elements formed the atmospheres, and the densest elements formed the globe of the earth. When the philosophers were asked where human souls came from, they replied, "Ether divides itself into little separate balls. These balls pour into people who are about to be born and become their souls. After people die, these souls fly back to the aggregate mass in the ether where they started out. Then they come down into other people, as we know from the ancient concept of reincarnation. " Then a priest, who used solid reasoning to argue that God created the universe, pounded all their arguments to a pulp and put them to shame. They nevertheless held on to the ridiculous ideas they had had to begin with.

80: A conversation with a satan about God, the angelic heaven, and religion. Because he had no idea he was not still in the physical world, he said (among a number of other foolish things) that God is the universe; the angelic heaven is the ethereal firmament; and religion is an evil spell cast on the multitudes. When it was brought to his remembrance that he was in fact now alive after death himself (even though he had not formerly believed in life after death), for a brief moment he confessed that he was insane, but as soon as he turned homeward and left, his former insanity returned.

110: In the night I saw a strange light falling to the earth. Many refer to it as "the dragon. " I made a note of the place where it landed. The ground there was a mixture of sulfur and iron filings. In the morning I saw two tents there. Soon afterward I saw a spirit falling down from heaven. I went over to him and asked why he had fallen out of heaven like that. He answered that Michael's angels had thrown him down, because he had said that God the Father and his Son are two, not one. He said that the entire angelic heaven believes that God the Father and his Son are one as a soul and a body are one - a point the angels support with many passages from the Word. They also use rational argumentation as support: they say the Son's soul came from nowhere else but the Father; therefore that soul was an image of the Father, and the body that came from it contained that image. He added that when he was in heaven he of course spoke of one God, just as he used to do on earth; but because his verbal statements to this effect did not match what he was thinking, the angels said he did not believe in any God, because the two views cancel each other out. He said this was why he was thrown out of heaven.

The next day when I went back to the same spot, in place of the tents I saw two statues that were made of the same materials as the ground there, which, as I say, was a mixture of sulfur and iron. One statue represented the role of faith in the modern-day church; the other represented the role of goodwill. Both were beautifully dressed, but the clothes were just projected images. Because of the materials the statues were made of, however, when a rain shower fell from heaven they both began to fizz and burn.

111: In the spiritual world, no one is able to say anything except what he or she truly thinks; if they do otherwise, their hypocrisy is plainly audible. As a result, no one in hell can say the name Jesus, because "Jesus" means salvation. This is how those in the other world can find out how many people in the Christian world today actually believe that Christ even in his human nature is God. Therefore there was a conference involving many clergy and lay people; they were asked to say "divine-human. " Scarcely any of the participants were able to think these two words together at the same time and say them. Many passages from the Word were read out loud to them to the effect that even the Lord's human manifestation was God, such as Matthew 28:18; John 1:1-2, 14; 17:2; Colossians 2:9; 1 John 5:20; and others. The participants remained still unable to utter the words "divine-human. " People were amazed to find that Lutherans were unable to say this, despite the fact that their orthodox writings teach that in Christ God is human and a human is God. It was even more surprising to find that Catholic monks who had celebrated with the utmost reverence the body of Christ in their Eucharist were unable to say this. These experiments showed that the vast majority of Christians today are inwardly either Arians or Socinians and that any adoration they pay to Christ as God is merely hypocritical.

112: A dispute broke out concerning Survey of Teachings of the New Church, a little volume I published in Amsterdam. People were particularly concerned about the teaching in it that we should turn to and worship the Lord God the Redeemer rather than God the Father. They countered that the Lord's prayer says, "Our Father, you who are in the heavens, your name must be kept holy; your kingdom must come"; therefore we should turn to God the Father. Summoned to settle this dispute, I demonstrated that it is impossible for us to turn to God the Father in his divinity, but we can turn to him in his humanity. Because the divine nature and the human nature together constitute one person, the Lord is the Father mentioned in the Lord's prayer. I backed this up with statements from the Word of the Old Testament, where the Son of God is called the Father of Eternity, and with many passages there that speak of Jehovah the Redeemer, Jehovah our Justice, and the God of Israel. I also cited many passages from the New Testament. Therefore when we turn to the Lord God the Redeemer, we are turning to the Father; then his name is kept holy, then his kingdom comes, and so on.

113: I saw an army on red horses and black horses. The riders were all turned around with their faces toward the horses' tails and their backs toward the horses' heads. They were shouting battle cries against some riders on white horses. This ludicrous army had burst forth from the place called Armageddon (Revelation 16:16). The army consisted of people who in early adulthood had absorbed the dogmas of justification by faith alone. When they were promoted later on to high-ranking positions in the church, they rejected the teachings about faith and religion from the inner realms of their mind and moved them into the outer realms related to their body, where those teachings eventually disappeared altogether. The account includes a description of how they appeared in Armageddon.

There was a report from there that they wanted to meet with Michael's angels. This was granted, although the groups were to remain a certain distance apart. The two groups then battled over the meaning of the following words in the Lord's prayer: "Our Father, you who are in the heavens, your name must be kept holy; your kingdom must come" [Matthew 6:9-10]. Michael's angels said that the Lord the Redeemer and Savior is the Father of all who are in the heavens; he himself teaches that the Father and he are one; that the Father is in him and he is in the Father; that those who see him see the Father; that all things belonging to the Father are his; also that it is the will of the Father that people should believe in the Son, and that those who do not believe the Son will not see life; instead the anger of God will remain on them; also that all power in heaven and on earth belongs to him and that he has power over all flesh; and that no one has seen or could see God the Father except the Son alone, who is close to the Father's heart; and much more. After the Armageddonites were thoroughly conquered as a result of this battle, one part of their group was thrown into the great pit mentioned in Revelation 9; the other part was sent out into a desert.

134: I was in a church that was without windows, but had a large opening in the roof. The people who were gathered there were talking about redemption. They were of one mind in saying that redemption was accomplished through Christ's suffering on the cross. While they were discussing this, a dark cloud came and covered the opening in the roof, causing total darkness in the church. Soon the cloud was driven away by angels who came down from heaven.

The angels sent one of their own down to the church to teach the congregation about redemption. This angel said that the suffering on the cross was not redemption. Redemption was a matter of gaining control over the hells, restructuring the heavens, and restoring all things that had lapsed in both the spiritual and the physical world. Without these achievements, no flesh could have been saved [Matthew 24:22]. He said that the Lord's suffering on the cross was the last step in achieving union with the Father at the deepest level. He also said that confusing the suffering on the cross with redemption entails thinking many unworthy and in fact horrendous things about God - that God locked the whole human race into damnation, but the Son took that damnation on himself, which appeased the Father; then the Son's intercession restored the Father to his divine essence, which is love and mercy; not to mention many other qualities that are very wrong to ascribe to God.

135: I saw the sun in the spiritual world, which surrounds Jehovah God in his human manifestation. Then from heaven I heard, There is one God. As this statement came down into the world of spirits, it changed as it was adapted to the form of the minds there. It eventually turned into a notion of three gods. One person added an argument in support of three gods, saying that there is one who created all things, a second who redeemed all people, and a third who puts everything into effect. Again, there is one who assigns spiritual credit or blame, a second who mediates for us, and a third who gives us our assigned and mediated credit. This, he argued, is how we receive the faith that makes us just. In reality, however, that belief in three gods has corrupted the entire Christian church.

With a perception that was given to me then, I revealed what mediation, intercession, appeasement, and ritual purging mean in the context of one God. These are actually four attributes of the human manifestation of Jehovah God, because without that manifestation, Jehovah God could not have gotten close to us nor we to him. Mediation refers to God's human manifestation as the intermediary. Intercession refers to his mediating as ongoing. Appeasement refers to God's human manifestation as providing every human being with welcome access to God. Ritual purging refers to this access as available even to those who have committed sins. All these [blessings] come to us through God's human manifestation.

136: I entered a hall where people were discussing how one should interpret the statement that the Son of God sits at the right hand of the Father. They expressed various opinions of what this means, but they all agreed that he does literally do this. They discussed possible reasons for it. Some believed it was because he was the Redeemer; some believed it was because of love; some believed it allowed him to act as an adviser; some believed it was so the angels could honor him; some believed it allowed him to rule in place of the Father; some believed it was so that the Father could hear with his right ear the list of people for whom Jesus was interceding. The people also debated whether it was the Son of God from eternity who sits there, or the Son of God born in the world.

When they had finished, I raised my hand and asked if I might be allowed to say something and explain what sitting at the right hand of God means. I said that it means the omnipotence of God that is exercised through the human manifestation that he took on. It was through this manifestation that he achieved redemption, meaning that he gained control of the hells, created a new angelic heaven, and established a new church. To support that this is what sitting at the right hand of God means, I cited a number of passages from the Word in which the right hand means power. Afterward, there was further confirmation from heaven when a right hand appeared above them that had such power and so terrified them that they almost lost consciousness.

137: In the spiritual world I was taken to attend a council. The participants included famous people who had lived before the time of the Council of Nicaea, called the apostolic fathers, and well-known people from after the time of that council. I noticed that some in the latter group were clean-shaven and wore curled wigs of women's hair, but all in the former group were bearded and wore no wigs. Before them all stood a man who had been a judge and critic of the writers of this century.

He began his remarks with the following lament: "Some layperson has risen up and pulled our faith down from its sanctuary. Yet that faith is a star that shines before us day and night. He did so because he is completely blind to the mysteries of our faith. He does not see that it contains the justice of Christ. He does not see that it contains the miracle of justification by faith. Yet our faith believes in three divine persons and therefore in the whole of God. Instead, he has redirected belief toward the second Person - in fact, not even the whole second Person, but just his human manifestation. How can his perspective do anything but spew materialist philosophy?" The group that had lived after the Council of Nicaea applauded his statement. They said that it was impossible for faith to be different or to come from any other source.

The apostolic fathers, who had lived before the century [of the Council of Nicaea], were upset, however. They related a number of things that people in heaven have to say about the Nicene and the Athanasian faith; the reader may review these in the account.

Because the chairman of the council was associated in spirit with an author in Leipzig, I addressed him and demonstrated from the Word that Christ is God even in regard to his human manifestation. I showed from the Formula of Concord, the dogmatic volume adhered to by Lutherans, that in Christ, God is human and a human is God. Among a number of other things, I also showed that the Augsburg Confession completely supports the worship of Christ. In response to all this he just looked away in silence.

After that I spoke with a spirit who was associated with an eminent man in Goteborg who had befouled the worship of the Lord with an even greater insult. By the end, these assaults of theirs were declared to be lies invented by treachery, aimed at turning and deterring the human will from the holy worship of the Lord.

159: Smoke appeared, rising up from the lower earth. I commented that smoke simply means a mass of false beliefs. Some angels were then seized with a desire to explore which false beliefs were causing that smoke. They went down and came upon four sets of spirits in ranks. Two sets consisted of clergy: one group of these was of learned clergy; the other, regular clergy. Two sets consisted of laypeople: one group of these was educated laypeople; the other, uneducated laypeople. They were all convinced that people should worship the God who cannot be seen. That type of worship provides worshipers with holiness. God hears worship like that, which is not the case when worship is directed to a God who can be seen. They used various arguments to support the notion that holiness and God's hearing result from worshiping a God who cannot be seen. This is why they acknowledge the existence of three gods from eternity, none of whom can be seen.

They were shown, however, that worshiping a God who cannot be seen is no kind of worship at all; it is even worse to worship three gods who cannot be seen. As support for this point, Socinus and Arius were brought up from below, along with a number of their followers, all of whom worshiped a divinity that could not be seen. When Socinus, Arius, and their followers spoke from the earthly or outer level of their mind, they said that even though God cannot be seen, he does exist. When their outer mind was closed, however, and their inner mind was opened, and they were compelled to state their real beliefs about God, they said, "What is God? We haven't seen the way he looks or heard his voice. What then is God except nature, or else a figment of the imagination?" They were then taught that it pleased God to come down and take on a human manifestation so that we could see what he looks like and hear his voice. But to their ears, this was a pointless teaching.

160: The first part of the account concerns the possibility that there are the same number of stars in the physical world as there are angelic communities in heaven, since every community in heaven sometimes shines like a star.

Next, I spoke with angels about a certain road that is crowded with countless spirits. It is the road by which all who die in the physical world cross over into the spiritual world. The angels and I went to that road. We took aside twelve people from the road and asked them what they believed about heaven and hell and life after death. Because they were just arriving from the physical world, they did not realize they were not still in that world. As a result they gave us the ideas they were bringing with them from that world. The first said that people who live moral lives go to heaven; therefore no one goes to hell, because everyone lives a moral life. The second said that God rules heaven, and the Devil rules hell. Because they are opposed to each other, one calls good what the other calls evil. Human beings are phonies who can take either side; therefore they are equally capable of living under either leader. The third said that heaven does not exist, and neither does hell. Who has come back to tell us about them? The fourth explained the reason why no one can come back and tell us about them, which is that when we die we become either a ghost or blowing air. The fifth said we need to wait for the day of the Last Judgment. Then they will tell all, and you will know all. But when he said that, he was laughing to himself. The sixth asked how a human soul that was no more than air blowing around could come back into a body that had been consumed by worms, and reclaim a skeleton that had either burned up or crumbled to dust. The seventh said people cannot live after death any more than animals and birds can - animals and birds are just as rational as human beings. The eighth said, "I believe in heaven, but I don't believe in hell. God is omnipotent. He can save everyone. " The ninth said that God is too gracious to throw anyone into eternal fire. The tenth said that no one can go to hell, because God sent his Son to bear the sins of all people and purge them. What is the Devil capable of doing against that? The eleventh, who was a priest, said that the only people who are saved are those who have acquired faith. It is up to the Almighty to choose who is worthy. The twelfth, who was in politics, said, "I will not say anything about heaven or hell. It is good for the priests to preach about them, though, so that commoners are held mentally bound to laws and to leaders by an invisible chain. "

The angels were stunned to hear these points of view. They woke the people up by teaching them that they were now alive after their own death. The angels brought them to heaven, but the people were unable to stay there long because it was discovered that they were not at all spiritual, and as a result the backs of their heads were hollowed out. At the end of the account, there is a discussion about that hollowing out and what causes it.

161: I heard the sound of a mill. As I followed the sound I came to a building that was full of cracks. The entrance went down underground. Inside I saw a man who was collecting [on slips of paper] a number of passages from the Word and other books concerning justification by faith alone. Copyists in the next room were writing out on a full sheet the passages he had found. When I asked him the topic of the passages he was collecting now, he said, "The point that God the Father lapsed from an attitude of grace toward the human race, and therefore sent his Son to make atonement and appease the Father. " By way of response, I said that it goes against Scripture and sound reason to think that God could lapse from an attitude of grace; that would be lapsing from his own essence, and that would mean he was no longer God. When I thoroughly demonstrated this, he became angry and ordered his copyists to throw me out. As I was walking out on my own, he picked up a book that happened to be at hand and threw it at me. The book was the Word.

162: There was a dispute among spirits about whether any of us can see any genuine truth in the Word without help from the Lord, who is the Word. Because there was a strong difference of opinion, we conducted an experiment. The people who turned to God the Father did not see a single truth, but all who turned to the Lord saw things that were true.

As this debate went on, some spirits came up from the abyss mentioned in Revelation 9 a place where they discuss and explore the secrets of justification by faith alone. These spirits claimed that they turn to God the Father and see their mysteries in a perfectly clear light. They were told, however, that they are seeing those mysteries in faint, deceptive light, and that in reality, not a single thing they believe is true. Angered by this, they quoted many sayings from the Word. The angels' response was that those sayings are intrinsically true, but have been falsified by those spirits; the truth of this was shown by taking them to a place with a table onto which light flows straight from heaven. The spirits were instructed to write the truths they had taken from the Word on a piece of paper and place it on the table. They did so. The piece of paper with their truths written on it shone like a star. Nevertheless, when the spirits approached the table and fixed their gaze on the piece of paper, the paper came to look as if it had been blackened with soot.

Then the spirits were taken to another table of the same kind. On it was the Word, surrounded by a rainbow. One of the people present had been a leading author, while in the world, on the doctrine that we are justified by faith alone. When he confidently touched the Word with his hand, there was an explosion as if a gun had gone off. He was thrown into the corner of the room and lay there as if he were dead for about half an hour. The spirits were shown convincingly by this that the truths they knew from the Word were intrinsically true, but they had falsified them.

185: The spiritual world has climatic zones just like the physical world, including northern zones with snow and ice. On one occasion I was led in spirit to that northern area. I went into a church that was buried in snow; inside, it was lit with lanterns. Behind the altar there was a plaque with an inscription: The divine Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are essentially one God but personally three. I heard a priest give a sermon on four mysteries of faith (see details in the account), saying that in regard to them we should hold our intellect under obedience to faith. After church, members of the congregation thanked the priest for a sermon that was rich in wisdom. I asked them whether they understood any of it. They answered, "We took it all in with open ears. Why do you ask whether we understood it? Isn't the intellect too stupid to understand these topics?"

The priest, who was still present, added, "Because you heard and did not understand, you are blessed, since you have salvation as a result. " And so on.

186: The human mind is differentiated into three levels, as is heaven, where angels live. In people who love truth because it is true, theological issues dwell on the highest level of the mind; moral issues are located on the middle level, below theological issues; and political issues dwell on the lowest level, below moral issues. Academic subjects of various kinds form a doorway to all the higher issues. In people who do not love truth, however, theological issues occupy the lowest level and become intertwined with their own self-interest and with lies told by their five senses. This is why some people are completely incapable of taking in theological truths.

187: I was taken to the place where there are people meant by the false prophet in the Book of Revelation. They invited me to come and see their shrine. I went and saw it. In the shrine there was a statue of a woman dressed in scarlet clothes, holding a gold coin in her right hand and a chain of pearls in her left. These were projected images, however. When the Lord opened the inner levels of my mind, instead of the shrine I saw a house that was full of cracks, and instead of the woman, I saw a beast like the one described in Revelation 13:2. Under the floor there was a swamp; in the swamp the Word lay deeply hidden.

Soon, however, the east wind blew away the shrine and dried up the swamp, allowing the Word to appear. In the light of heaven a tent came into view, like the one Abraham had when three angels came to him to announce that Isaac was going to be born. As light was let in from the second heaven, instead of the tent I saw a temple like the Temple in Jerusalem. After that, light from the third heaven shone down. Then the temple disappeared, and I saw the Lord alone, standing on the foundation stone, where the Word was. Because an overpowering sense of holiness then filled our minds, that light was withdrawn, and instead the channel of light from the second heaven was reopened. As a result, the earlier appearance of a temple returned, with a tent in the middle of it.

188: I saw a magnificent palace that had a chapel in its center. In the chapel there were three rows of chairs. A council had been called by the Lord there. The participants were to discuss the Lord the Savior and the Holy Spirit. When as many clergy had arrived as there were chairs, the council began.

Since the first topic was the Lord, the first issue to be discussed was, Who took on a human manifestation in the Virgin Mary? An angel standing by the table read to them what the angel Gabriel said to Mary: "The Holy Spirit will descend upon you, and the power of the Highest will cover you; therefore the Holy One that will be born from you will be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35; see also Matthew 1:20, 25). The angel also read a number of statements in the prophets to the effect that Jehovah himself would come into the world and that Jehovah himself is called the Savior, the Redeemer, and Justice. This led the group to conclude that it was Jehovah himself who took on a human manifestation.

The second discussion on the topic of the Lord was, Are the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ one as the soul and the body are one? Many passages both from the Word and from a creed of the modern-day church were quoted in support of this point. The group concluded that the Lord's soul came from God the Father and therefore his human manifestation was divine. They also concluded that when we seek help from the Father, we must turn to the Lord's divine human manifestation. That is how Jehovah God sent himself into the world and made himself visible to human eyes, and accessible.

The third discussion took up the topic of the Holy Spirit. The first thing to be discussed was the issue of three divine persons from eternity. Passages from the Word were used to show that the holy quality that radiates from God, which is called the Holy Spirit, emanates from the Lord on behalf of the Father.

At the end, the council brought all its discussions together into a single conclusion: The divine Trinity exists within the Lord the Savior; the Trinity is made up of the divine nature as an origin called "the Father," the divine human manifestation called "the Son," and the emanating divine influence called "the Holy Spirit"; therefore there is one God in the church. After the council came to an end, the participants were given shining clothing and were led to the new heaven.

277: In a manger, I saw large purses, which contained a significant quantity of silver. Young men were standing guard over them. In the next room, there were some modest young women and a faithful wife. In yet another room there were two little children. Last of all, I saw a whore and dead horses. Afterward I was told what each of these things meant. They were all depicting and describing the Word, either as it is in its essence, or the way it is understood nowadays.

278: I saw an example of the writing used in the highest or third heaven. It consists of curved letters with little horns that turn upward. I was informed that these letters are somewhat similar to the Hebrew letters of earliest times, when they were more curved than they are today. The letter h, which was added to Abram and Sarai's names, means infinity and eternity. I was given an explanation of the meaning of a number of words in Psalms 32:2 on the basis of the letters alone. The meaning is that the Lord is also compassionate to those who do evil.

279: Before the Israelite Word there was a Word whose prophetical portion was called The Pronouncements, and whose historical portion was called The Wars of Jehovah. It also included a work called the Book of Jasher. These three titles are mentioned in the Word we have now. That ancient Word existed in the land of Canaan, Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Assyria, Chaldea, and Egypt; and in Tyre, Sidon, and Nineveh. That Word was full of a type of correspondences that presented heavenly and spiritual things remotely. This left it vulnerable to [misinterpretation by] idolaters. Therefore by divine providence it disappeared. I have heard that Moses took from that Word the things he wrote about creation, Adam and Eve, and the Flood, and what he mentioned about Noah and his three sons; but nothing after that. I have been told in the spiritual world by angels who had lived in Great Tartary that that same Word still exists among the peoples there; those peoples base the principles of their faith and life on it.

280: People who are in the spiritual world cannot appear to people who are in the physical world, and neither can people in the physical world appear to people in the spiritual world. Therefore spirits and angels cannot appear to people, and people cannot appear to spirits and angels. This is due to the difference between what is spiritual and what is earthly, or, to put it another way, the difference between what is substantial and what is material. It is because of this that spirits and angels have completely different language, different writing, and different thinking than people do.

This was revealed to me through a living experience. Several times, spirits went home to their own group, then came back to me, and we made comparisons. We learned that spiritual language and earthly language have not even a single word in common. In addition, each of the letters in their writing contains a meaning relative to the topic at hand. They also think things that are beyond an earthly person's comprehension. The reason behind these differences is that spirits and angels are at the level of primary structures, whereas people in the world are in derivations from them. To put it another way, spirits and angels live among primary things that act as causes of secondary things; people live among those secondary things. A voice said that a similar difference exists between the language, writing, and thinking of angels of the third heaven compared to the language, writing, and thinking of angels of the second heaven.

281: On the states people go through after they die - what happens generally, and what happens in particular to people who have convinced themselves of theological falsities. About both of these groups I have observed the following: (1) For the most part people come back to their own life spiritually on the third day after they die. At that point they have no idea they are not still alive in the former world. (2) All arrive at a world that is midway between heaven and hell; it is called the world of spirits. (3) They are transferred to various different communities as a way of finding out what their true quality is. (4) In that world, those who are good and faithful are prepared for heaven, and those who are evil and unfaithful are prepared for hell. (5) After this preparation, which lasts for several years, a road opens up for good people, leading to a particular community in heaven where they will live forever; a road into hell opens up for evil people. And so on. Afterward the account describes what hell is like. The spirits there called satans are people who were adamantly devoted to falsities; the spirits called devils are people who lived evil lives.

332: From the lower earth, which is the next level up from hell, I heard people shouting, "They are so just! They are so learned! They are so wise!" Because I was struck by the thought that there might be just, learned, and wise people in hell, I went down. First I went to the place where people were shouting, "They are so just!" I saw a courtroom of sorts. The judges in it were actually unjust and ingenious in their methods of bending the law and handing down favorable sentences to whomever they chose. They saw it as entirely up to their own whim to decide which side their adjudications would support. When they handed down sentences that favored their friends and supporters, these people went all the way down a long road shouting, "They are so just!" Angels later commented on these judges, saying that they are actually incapable of seeing what is just. Some time later, those judges were thrown into hell. Their law books turned into playing cards. Then, instead of being judges they were given the task of preparing makeup and applying it to the faces of promiscuous women to make them beautiful.

333: Next I went to the place where people were shouting, "They are so learned!" I saw a large group of people who dispute about whether a given thing exists or not. They never come to a definite yes; therefore in considering any topic, they never get beyond the first step. They only touch on issues from the outside; they never go deeply into them. Their consideration of God stops at whether he exists or not.

In order to confirm that this was indeed their nature, I posed a question to them: "What does a religion need to be like in order to save people?" Their response was that they would need to debate the following related questions. (1) Is religion anything? (2) Is one religion more effective than another? (3) Is there such a thing as eternal life, and therefore is there such a thing as salvation? (4) Do heaven and hell exist? They began to discuss the first issue: "Is religion anything?" They said this question needed so much investigation that they could not finish within a year. One of them said it could not be finished within a hundred years. I replied, "Meanwhile you have no religion. "

Nevertheless, they discussed this first question with such consummate skill that the crowd standing around them exclaimed, "They are so learned!" Angels told me that [in heaven's light] these kinds of people look like statues. Eventually they are sent out into desert places and blather to each other and utter nothing but nonsense.

334: I went to the third group, where I had heard people shouting, "They are so wise!" I learned that the people who were gathered there were incapable of seeing whether a truth is true or not, yet they can take anything they want and make it appear to be true. Therefore they are called providers of arguments. From the sheer variety of responses they gave to questions posed to them, I observed that this was indeed their nature. For example, they were able to make it seem entirely true that faith is the most important thing in the church. Soon afterward, they were able to make it seem entirely true that goodwill is the most important thing in the church. They did the same for the point that goodwill and faith together are the most important thing in the church. Because they argued every point with consummate skill and draped it in compelling illustrations until it glowed like genuine truth, the crowd standing around them exclaimed, "They are so wise!"

When they said that nothing is true except what people make out to be true, someone proposed a few ridiculous points for them to argue as true: That light is darkness, and darkness is light; and also that crows are white, not black. They did indeed manage to make these points seem absolutely true. (For the arguments they used, see the account itself.)

Angels told me that people like this do not possess even a speck of understanding. Everything above their rational faculty is closed off; only what is below it is opened up. The nature of this lower area is that it can provide arguments to support whatever it wants, but cannot see any real truth for what it is. Being able to provide arguments to support whatever you want is not intelligence; intelligence is being able to see that what is true is true and what is false is false and to provide arguments to support that.

335: I spoke with spirits who had been famous scholars during their lives in the physical world. They were having a sharp dispute about innate ideas. At issue was whether people are born with innate ideas the way animals are. An angelic spirit interrupted their conversation and said, "What you are fighting about is goat's wool. Neither people nor animals have any innate ideas. " The spirits were all outraged by this.

When the angelic spirit was given the floor, the first point he made was that animals have no innate ideas, because they have no thought process. They operate entirely on the instincts that come from the earthly type of love they have. These function like a faculty of will in them. Their instincts flow directly into their bodily senses; they also drive the animals to do whatever agrees with and benefits their love. Ideas come into play only where there is thought. Animals have no thought; they have only sensation.

The angelic spirit supported this point with a number of illustrations - especially the remarkable facts known about spiders, bees, and silkworms. He said, "When a spider is weaving its web, is it thinking in its tiny head that it should weave its web this or that way to serve this or that purpose? When a bee is extracting [the raw materials for] honey from some flowers and wax from others, is it thinking in its tiny head, 'With this wax I will build adjacent cells one after the other; in them I will put enough honey to last all winter,' and other plans like that? Is a silkworm thinking in its tiny head, 'Now I will spend time spinning silk. When I have finished, I will fly off and play with my friends and ensure that I have offspring'? Similar arguments could be made about animals and birds. "

Concerning human beings he said that any mother or wet nurse, or even any father, knows that newborn babies have no innate ideas whatsoever. They have no ideas before they learn to think. Then for the first time ideas develop in them. Their ideas form entirely in accordance with the quality of thought they have developed as a result of their education. The reason for this is that we have nothing innate except a faculty for knowing, understanding, and becoming wise, as well as a tendency to love not only ourselves and the world but also our neighbor and God.

Leibniz and Wolff heard this from a distance. Leibniz agreed, but Wolff felt otherwise.

385: Once, an angelic spirit illustrated for me what faith and goodwill are and what their union accomplishes, through an analogy with light and heat. They come together to form a third entity. In essence, the light in heaven is truth that has to do with faith. In essence, the heat in heaven is goodness that has to do with goodwill. Light without heat, which is what is experienced on earth during winter, strips trees of their leaves and fruits. Faith without goodwill has a similar effect. Light united to heat, which is what is experienced on earth during spring, brings all things to life. Faith united to goodwill has a similar effect.

386: Two angels came down. One was from the eastern part of heaven, where love is the primary focus; the other was from the southern part of heaven, where wisdom is the primary focus. They discussed whether the essence of the heavens was love or whether it was wisdom. They came to agree that love is the essence, and wisdom is derived from it. Therefore God created the heavens from love by means of wisdom.

387: After that, I went into a large garden. A spirit showed me around. We came to a magnificent building called the Temple of Wisdom. It was square; its walls were made of crystal; its roof was made of jasper; its foundation was made of different types of precious stone. The spirit told me that none were allowed in it unless they believe that what they know, understand, and are wise about is so relatively small as to be almost nonexistent compared to what they do not know, do not understand, and are not wise about. Because this was my belief, I was allowed to go in. I saw that the whole temple was built to be a form of light. In the temple, I related what I had just heard from the two angels concerning love and wisdom; [the spirits there] asked whether the angels had mentioned the third element, which is usefulness. [The spirits] said that without usefulness love and wisdom are mere conceptual entities; only in usefulness do they become real. The same is true for goodwill, faith, and good actions.

388: One of the dragon spirits invited me to see the types of entertainment they love. He took me to something like an amphitheater with satyrs and whores in the seats. He said, "Now you are going to see our form of entertainment. " He opened a gate and let in what looked like bull calves, rams, goats, and lambs. Soon, through another gate, he let in lions, panthers, tigers, and wolves. These animals attacked the herd of other animals and tore them to pieces and slaughtered them. The whole spectacle had been conjured up, though, through the use of projected images.

I then said to the dragon, "It won't be long before you see this amphitheater turned into a lake of fire and sulfur. "

Once the entertainment was over, the dragon left, surrounded by his satyrs and whores. Seeing a flock of sheep, he realized that one of the many Jerusalem cities was nearby. When he saw the city he was overcome by a desire to capture it and drive out its inhabitants, but because there was a wall around it, he planned instead to use deceit to capture it. He sent in someone skilled in incantation. Once he was in the city, that person spoke skillfully to its citizens about faith and goodwill, raising the issue of which of the two was primary, and questioning whether goodwill contributes anything to salvation. Irritated at the response he received, the dragon left the city, gathered many of his people, and began to lay siege to the city; but while he was working on capturing and invading the city, fire from heaven devoured them, just as Revelation 20:8-9 predicted it would.

389: On one occasion a document was sent down from heaven. It strongly urged people [of a community in the world of spirits] to acknowledge the Lord the Savior as the God of heaven and earth, as he himself taught (Matthew 28:18). The people sought advice from two bishops in that community regarding what they should do. The bishops told them to send the document back to the heaven where it came from. When they did so, the community sank down, but not very far.

The next day some of them came up from there and recounted what had happened to them after they sank down. They mentioned that they had gone back to the bishops and confronted them about the outcome of their advice. They then had a long interchange with the bishops concerning the state of the modern-day church. They rebuked the bishops for their doctrinal positions on the Trinity, goodwill, and justification by faith, and for other elements of their orthodoxy. They asked the bishops to abandon those positions because they are contrary to the Word; but it was pointless. When they said that according to the Epistle of James the bishops' faith was dead and even diabolical [James 2:14-26; ], one of the bishops took off his miter and put it on the table, saying that he would not put it back on until he had taken his revenge for these insults to his faith. Just then, however, a monster appeared rising up from below that looked like the beast described in Revelation 13:1-2. The monster took the bishop's miter and carried it away.

390: I came to a house where people were discussing the good things that people do in an ongoing state of being justified by their faith. At issue was whether that good is or is not religious good. There was consensus that "religious good" means good that contributes to salvation. The group that prevailed had the opinion that no good thing we do contributes anything to our salvation. Their argument for this was that any good that people do voluntarily cannot be united to something they get for free, and salvation is had for free. How could any good that people do be united to the merit of Christ? The merit of Christ is the sole source of salvation. How could the work that people do be united to the work that the Holy Spirit does? It does everything without the help of humankind. For these reasons they concluded that even when we are being justified by our faith, faith alone saves us; our good works contribute nothing to our salvation. Two non-Christians standing in the front hall said to each other, "These people have no religion. Clearly, religion is doing good to our neighbor for the sake of God and therefore with God and from God. "

391: I heard angels complaining about the spiritual poverty in the church today. It is so pervasive, they said, that people know only that there are three divine persons and that faith alone saves. Of the Lord they know only some historical facts. They are completely unaware of the statements in the Word that concern the Lord, his unity with the Father, and his divinity and power.

The angels told me that one angel went down to investigate whether there really was such spiritual poverty among Christians today. That angel asked someone what his religion was. He answered, "Faith. " The angel asked him his point of view on redemption, regeneration, and salvation. He answered that they all had to do with faith. Asked about goodwill, he said it exists in that faith; we cannot do anything good on our own.

The angel then said to him, "You give answers like someone playing the same note again and again on a flute. I am not hearing anything but faith. If you don't know anything except faith, you don't know anything. " He took him to join his companions in a part of the desert where there was not even any grass. There is more to the account as well.

459: I saw five halls surrounded with different kinds of light. I joined a large group of people entering the first hall, which was surrounded with a fiery light. There was a huge crowd inside. The chairperson proposed that people give their opinions of goodwill.

As the event got underway, the first person said that goodwill is morality inspired by faith. The second defined it as religious devotion combined with compassion. The third defined it as doing good to everyone, whether honest or dishonest. The fourth defined it as doing everything you can for your relatives and friends. The fifth defined it as giving donations to the poor and helping the needy. The sixth defined it as building hospices, hospitals, and orphanages. The seventh defined it as providing church buildings with an endowment and benefiting its ministers. The eighth defined it as the ancient Christian family feeling. The ninth defined it as forgiving anyone's wrongs. They all gave ample support for their own definition; because there was a great deal of this supporting material, it will not fit in this index - see the account itself.

I was then given permission to express my own opinion. I said that goodwill is to act in all our work, and in every role we have, with judgment based on a love for justice - but only if that love comes solely from the Lord the Savior. After giving supporting arguments for my definition, I added that the actions described by the nine distinguished participants are outstanding examples of the practice of goodwill, provided they are done with judgment in accordance with justice; and because the sole source of true justice and judgment is the Lord our Savior, these are actions we need to take on his behalf. Many felt approval in their inner selves for what I had said, but their outer selves did not yet approve.

460: Off in the distance I heard a sound like teeth grinding together and a hammering sound mixed in with it. I went in the direction of the sounds and saw a hut made of rushes plastered together. Instead of the sounds of hammering and teeth grinding together that I had heard before, I now heard inside the hut an argument about faith and goodwill, and which of these two was the essence of the church. The side that favored faith put forward its arguments. They said that faith is spiritual, because it comes from God; but goodwill is earthly, because it comes from human beings. The side that favored goodwill said that goodwill is spiritual, but faith is merely earthly unless it is united to goodwill. A syncretist who was trying to resolve the dispute provided additional support for the view that faith is spiritual and goodwill is only earthly. In response, people said to him that a moral life comes in two types: there is a moral life that is spiritual, and there is a moral life that is merely earthly. People who live for the Lord have a life that is moral in a spiritual way; people who do not live for the Lord have a life that is moral in an earthly way. The latter type of life is practiced by evil people and sometimes even by the spirits in hell.

461: I was led in the spirit to a certain garden in the southern part. There I saw people sitting under a laurel tree eating figs. I asked them how it is that we can do something good on God's behalf and nevertheless do it completely as if we were acting on our own. They replied that God produces goodness inside us, but if we do something good of our own volition and understanding, we pollute that goodness to such an extent that it is no longer good. My response to that was that we are only organs that receive life. If we believe in the Lord, we do good things under our own initiative on the Lord's behalf. If we do not believe in the Lord, and still more so if we do not believe in God at all, we do good things under our own initiative on hell's behalf. The Lord has given us free choice to do one or the other of these. To show that the Lord gives us this freedom, I quoted passages from the Word that command us to love God and our neighbor, to produce good, loving actions as a tree bears fruit, and to do what the Lord commands so that we will be saved; and passages showing that we will all be judged according to our works. We would not have been commanded to do all this if we were incapable of doing good things under our own initiative on the Lord's behalf. After I said this, I gave them branches from a grapevine; in their hands, the branches suddenly produced grapes. The account contains more as well.

462: I saw a magnificent harbor with large and small vessels. Boys and girls were sitting in them, waiting for sea turtles, which would rise up out of the sea. When the turtles emerged, I saw that they had two heads. Whenever they wanted to, they would retract one head into the shell that covered their body. The other head looked human; with it they spoke to the boys and girls. In exchange for the turtles' elegant words, the children would stroke them and give them gifts.

An angel explained the meaning of what I had seen. The turtles are [clergy] in the world (and therefore also the spirits of clergy after they die) who say that once we have acquired faith, God does not look at anything we think or anything we do; the only thing he cares about is the faith that lies hidden deep within our minds. In front of the congregations assembled in their churches, these clergy utter sacred teachings from the Word just as much as other clergy do, but they do so from the larger head, which looks human. They insert the smaller head into the larger head or else retract it into their body.

I later saw the same members of the clergy flying through the air in a boat with seven sails. They were wearing laurel wreaths and purple robes and were shouting that they are the wisest of all clergy. These visions were images of their pride, flowing forth from the pictures in their minds. When they were back on land, I argued with them first on the basis of reason and then on the basis of Sacred Scripture. I put forward many arguments to show that their teaching was insane and came from hell, as one can tell because it goes contrary to Sacred Scripture. (The arguments I used were too extensive to copy here; see the account itself.)

Afterward, I saw them in a sandy place in clothes made out of rags, with something like fishnets wrapped around their waists that still showed their nakedness. They were eventually sent down to a community near the Machiavellians.

503: An assembly had been called for. It met in a round temple with altars along the walls. The participants were sitting at these altars. There was no leader there, so individuals would burst forth into the center of the room whenever they felt so inclined and proclaim their views. The topic of conversation concerned free choice in spiritual matters. The first person to burst into the center of the room said that people have no more free choice in spiritual matters than Lot's wife had when she was turned into a pillar of salt. A second said that people have no more free choice than an animal like a dog. A third said that people's free choice is no better than a mole's or a barn owl's eyesight in broad daylight. A fourth said that if people were to have free choice in spiritual matters, they would become raving lunatics and believe that they, like gods, could regenerate and save themselves. A fifth read quotations from the Lutheran book called the Formula of Concord to the effect that in spiritual matters human beings have no more free choice than a log or a stone and cannot understand, think, or will such things at all, or adapt or accommodate themselves to receive anything spiritual. (More such teachings from that book are given in 464.)

After these speakers had finished, I was given permission to speak. I said, "If we had no free choice in regard to spiritual matters, what would we be but brute animals? If there is no free choice, what is the point of any theological teachings?"

Their reply was this: "Read our theology. You will not find anything spiritual in it. The spiritual aspect lies so deeply hidden within it that not even its shadow appears. Read what our theology has to say about justification, that is, about the forgiving of sins, regeneration, sanctification, and salvation. You will not see anything spiritual there. What is spiritual flows in through faith without our being in the least bit aware of it. " The speaker also indicated that goodwill was far removed from anything spiritual, and that repentance, too, was not within reach of anything spiritual. In regard to redemption, the speaker assigned merely human, earthly attributes to God: for example, that he locked the human race into universal damnation; but the Son took that damnation upon himself and appeased his Father. "What else was the Son's intercession and mediation with the Father if it was not that?" he asked. "Clearly then, there is nothing spiritual anywhere in our theology; there is not even anything rational. It is below what is spiritual and rational, and consists entirely of what is merely earthly. " Suddenly they heard a thunderbolt crashing down from heaven. The participants were terrified; they rushed out and fled to their homes.

504: I spoke with two spirits, one of whom loved goodness and truth, and the other of whom loved evil and falsity. I gathered that each of them had the same ability to think rationally. When the one who loved evil and falsity was left to himself, however, I saw a kind of smoke rise up from hell and extinguish the light that was above his memory. When the one who loved goodness and truth was left to himself, I saw a kind of gentle flame flow down from heaven and illuminate the region of his mind above the memory, as well as the region below it.

Afterward I had a conversation about free choice in spiritual matters with the one who loved evil and falsity. When I merely mentioned free choice he went into a rage. He proclaimed that none can move their hands or feet to do anything that is spiritually good; none can move their tongue or lips to say anything that is spiritually true. "Therefore we are not even able to adapt or accommodate ourselves to receive anything spiritual," he continued. "Surely we are all dead and merely passive in all such matters. How can something that is dead and merely passive do anything good or think anything true on its own? Is this not in accordance with what our church says?"

The other person, the one who loved goodness and truth, had this to say about free choice in spiritual matters: "If there is no spiritual free choice, what is the point of everything in the Word? What is the point of the church? What is the point of religion? What is the point in worshiping God? If there is no spiritual free choice, why have ministers? Because of the light in my intellect, I know that without spiritual freedom humans would be animals, not humans. It is that freedom that makes us human and not animals. For another thing, if there were no free choice in spiritual matters, we would not live on after death. There would be no eternal life, because we could have no partnership with God. Denying spiritual free choice, then, is something that could only be done by people who are spiritually insane. "

Afterward we saw a flying serpent in a tree. It was offering a piece of fruit to the one who denied that we have free choice in spiritual matters. As he took the fruit and ate it, smoke rose up from hell and extinguished any light that existed in the higher part of his rational mind.

505: I heard a loud scraping sound like two millstones grinding against each other. As I moved in the direction of the sound, I came to a building with many small compartments in it; it housed the great thinkers of recent times. They were finding support for justification by faith alone.

I went up to one compartment and asked the person there what he was studying now. He said, "I am studying the act of justification, which is the primary teaching in our Christianity. " I asked whether he knew of any sign that indicates when that justifying faith has begun to enter us and when it has finished. He replied that faith enters us passively, not actively.

To that I said, "If you take away our ability to be active in respect to our faith, aren't you also taking away our ability to be receptive to it? Doesn't that make your 'activation of faith' something purely theoretical, a figment of the imagination? Isn't it no more than Lot's wife as a statue, pinging when touched with a scribe's quill or fingernail, because it consisted of nothing but salt?" He became very angry and grabbed a lamp to throw at me, but the lamp went out and he hit his companion instead.

506: I saw two groups of animals: a herd of goats and a flock of sheep. When I saw them closer at hand, however, in place of the goats and sheep I saw people. I perceived that the herd of goats consisted of people who had made faith the only thing that saves us. The flock of sheep consisted of people who believed that goodwill together with faith [is what saves us]. When asked why they were there, the people who had looked like goats said they had convened a council because they had been told that Paul's statement in Romans 3:28 that "we are justified by faith apart from the works of the law" had not been understood correctly. "Faith" in that passage, they were told, does not mean the faith of [the church of] today; it means faith in the Lord the Savior. The "works of the law" do not mean the works of the law of the Ten Commandments; they mean the works of the Mosaic law, which were rituals. Passages were included that show this. The members of the council said their conclusion was that faith produces good works the way a tree produces fruit. The members of the flock of sheep agreed with this last point.

Then an angel stood between the herd and the flock and told the sheep not to listen to the goats. "They have not left their former belief," the angel said, and divided the sheep into two flocks. To the sheep on the left, the angel said, "Go ahead and join the goats, but I'm telling you, a wolf is coming that is going to snatch them away, and you along with them. " There was an investigation to find out what the goats meant when they said that faith produces good works the way a tree produces fruit. It was discovered that their actual understanding of the relationship between faith and goodwill was quite the opposite of what they had said; their statement was misleading.

Once both groups of sheep learned this, they reunited. Some of the goats even joined them, saying that goodwill is the essence of faith and that when faith is separated from goodwill it is only earthly, but when it is united to goodwill it becomes spiritual.

507: A conversation with angels about the three types of love that are universal and therefore exist in every human being: love for our neighbor, or love of being useful (in its essence this love is related to the spirit); love for the world, or a love of possessing wealth (in its essence this love is related to matter); and love for ourselves, or love of dominating other people (in its essence this love is related to the body). When these three loves are prioritized in the right way within us, we become truly human. They are rightly prioritized when love for our neighbor plays the role of the head, love for the world plays the role of the torso, and love for ourselves plays the role of the legs and feet. Our condition is entirely different when these loves are situated in us in a way that goes against the divine design. There was a demonstration of what human beings are like when love for the world plays the role of the head, and what they are like when love for themselves plays the role of the head. Under either of these conditions, they are upside-down people. At the level of their inner minds, they are predatory animals; at the level of their outer minds and bodies, they are clowns.

Then we saw a devil rising up from below. He had a dusky face and a white ring around his head. He said he was Lucifer (although in actual fact he was not). He said he was inwardly a devil, but outwardly an angel of light. He related that when he is in his outer self, he is moral among the moral, rational among the rational, and spiritual among the spiritual. When he was in the world, he was a preacher; he would rail against evildoers of every kind. At that time he was called a son of the dawn [Isaiah 14:12]. He himself was amazed to note that when he was in the pulpit he had no awareness that he was not as he said he was. Yet he was completely different when he was no longer in church. He even told us why. It was because in church he was in his outer self and in his intellect alone; when he left church he was in his inner self and in his will. His intellect lifted him up into heaven; his will dragged him down into hell. But the will rules the intellect; it turns the intellect to favor and agree with what it wants. Afterward this devil, who passed himself off as Lucifer, sank down into hell.

508: I saw a round temple, whose roof was shaped like a crown. Its walls were continuous windows of crystal clear glass. Its door was made of a pearly substance. In it there was a large raised pulpit, on top of which lay the Word, surrounded by a sphere of light. In the middle of the temple there was a sanctuary, with a veil at the front of it, but the veil was now lifted. In the shrine stood an angel guardian [made out of gold] with a sword moving this way and that in its hand.

After I saw all this, the meaning of each detail was explained to me (see the account itself). Above the door there was an inscription: Now It Is Allowed, which means that we are now allowed to use our intellect to explore the mysteries of faith. It came to mind how extremely dangerous it is to use our intellect to explore any dogma of faith that was constructed by a self-serving mindset and therefore consists of falsities. It is even worse to use statements from the Word to support such dogmas. This is why the Word was taken away from Roman Catholics and why Protestants [were allowed to] close the Word by their widespread assertion that the intellect has to be held under obedience to their faith. The dogmas of the new church, however, are all from the Word. We are allowed to use our intellect to explore them, because they are continuous truths from the Word; in fact, they shine in the intellect. This is the meaning of the inscription Now It Is Allowed over the door, and the meaning of the fact that the sanctuary veil in front of the angel guardian was lifted up.

Then a young child (who was actually an angel in the third heaven) brought me a piece of paper. The writing on it said, "From now on, explore the mysteries of the Word, which was formerly closed up. All of its individual truths are mirrors that reflect the Lord. "

567: I was suddenly overcome with a deadly illness from smoke that was blowing in from the Jerusalem that is called Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8). To people in that city I looked as though I actually was dead. They said to each other that I was not worthy of burial, much like what happened to the two witnesses in that same chapter of the Book of Revelation. Meanwhile I was hearing abundant blasphemies from the city-dwellers because I had been preaching repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. A judgment on them began. I saw the whole city sink down to a lower level and become flooded with water. Afterward I saw them running between piles of stones and loudly bemoaning what had happened to them even though, according to the faith of their church, they believed they had been reborn and had become just. They were told, however, that they were nothing of the kind, because they had never practiced any kind of repentance and therefore did not know of a single damnable evil in themselves. Then a voice from heaven told them that faith in the Lord and repentance are the two means of being regenerated and saved; the whole Word, the Ten Commandments, and the sacraments of baptism and the Holy Supper all make this abundantly clear. For details, see the account itself.

568: All people come into the spiritual world after death and are at first kept outwardly in the state they had been in during their lives in the world. Because most people in this outward state live moral lives and go to church and pray to God, they believe they are definitely bound for heaven. For this reason they are taught that after we die, we all gradually put off that outer self, and our inner self is opened up. Then we come to know what we are truly like inside. After all, what makes us human is not only our action and our speech but our will and our intellect. This is what allows us to appear outwardly as a sheep when we are inwardly a wolf. A wolf is in fact what our inner self is like if we have not examined the evils we have willed and intended, and have not practiced repentance from those evils. And so on.

569: Every type of love exudes a delight, but in the physical world these delights that come from what we love are not often detectable with our senses. In the spiritual world, however, they are very plainly sensed; in fact, they sometimes turn into odors. Then the quality of those delights and the nature of the love they come from is easily perceptible. The delights that come from loving what is good - the types of delight found in the heavens - come across as the fragrances that belong to vegetable gardens and flower gardens. On the other hand, the delights that come from loving what is evil - the types of delight found in the hells - come across as the foul odors and stenches given off by outhouses and [fetid] ponds. Because the two kinds of delight are opposites, devils are tormented when they smell some sweet aroma coming from heaven, and angels are tormented when they smell some reeking stench from hell. The account uses two of my own experiences to lend support to this point. This is why the oil for anointing was prepared with fragrant spices, and why we read [in the Word] that Jehovah smelled a pleasing aroma from burnt offerings. On the other hand, this is also why the children of Israel were commanded to carry unclean things from the camp outside its borders and to dig a hole for their fecal matter. Their camp represented heaven and the desert outside the camp represented hell.

570: A recently arrived spirit who, during his life in the world, had meditated a great deal on heaven and hell, desired to know how the one and the other are experienced. A message for him from heaven said, "Investigate what delight is, and you will know. " He went off on his investigation, but asking spirits who were merely earthly yielded pointless answers. Then he was taken to three groups in sequence. One group investigates purposes; its members are called Wisdoms. The second group surveys means; its members are called Intelligences. The third group conducts research on results; its members are called Knowledges. The recently arrived spirit was taught by these three groups that no angel, no spirit, and no human being would have any life if they did not experience delight from some love. In the absence of delight coming from some love, the will cannot take a single step, and neither can the thought process. What anyone calls good is what that person loves and takes delight in. The delight of heaven is delight in doing good; the delight of hell is delight in doing evil.

As further instruction for the newly arrived spirit and not by mere coincidence, a devil rose up and described for him the delights of hell. They were delights in taking revenge, whoring, stealing, and blaspheming. When those delights are sensed as odors [by those] in hell, they are experienced as intoxicating scents; therefore this devil referred to them as the delights of their nostrils.

621: I saw a group of spirits praying to God to send angels who could teach them about various points of faith. In many areas they were feeling unsure, because the churches disagree with each other and yet all the ministers say, "Believe us! We are ministers of God - we know these things. " Angels did appear to them, so the spirits asked them about goodwill and faith, repentance, regeneration, God, the immortality of the soul, and baptism and the Holy Supper. On each topic the angels gave answers that were understandable to the spirits. The angels added that an incomprehensible teaching is like a seed sown in sand; no matter how much rain falls on it, it still shrivels up. The angels also said that if people close their intellect for religious reasons, they no longer see anything in the Word in the light that the Lord provides there; in fact, the more they read the Word, the blinder they become regarding its teachings on faith and salvation.

622: How we come into heaven after we have been prepared for it: After preparation, we see a pathway to a community in heaven where we will live forever. We take that pathway. At the outskirts of the community there is a gate, which is opened for us. Once we are inside, there is an investigation to see if our light and heat (meaning our truth and goodness) is the same as the light and heat of the angels of that community. Once that is established, we look around to find out where our home is. For every new angel there is a new home. Once we find our home, we are accepted and counted as one of them. If we have no light and heat (meaning no truth or goodness of heaven) within us, though, it is a very hard experience for us to be there. When we enter that community we are miserably tormented. Because we feel tortured we throw ourselves down from there headfirst. We feel such torment in that case because the sphere of light and heat in heaven is the opposite of our own light and heat. After that, we no longer long for heaven; instead we associate with people like ourselves in hell.

All this shows the pointlessness of thinking that going to heaven is just a matter of being let in as a result of grace, and that once we are let in we too will experience joys there, as people on earth do when they are allowed into a home where a wedding is taking place.

623: Many people who believed that going to heaven is just a matter of being let in by grace, and that once they were there they would experience heavenly joy, were granted permission to go up into heaven. They were not able, however, to stand the light and the heat there, that is, the faith and the love; therefore they threw themselves down from there headfirst. As they were falling, they looked like dead horses to people who were standing below.

Among the people standing below and seeing them that way were some children and their teacher. The teacher taught the children what the vision of dead horses meant, and also what sort of people would appear that way from a distance: they were people whose reading of the Word entails thoughts of God, their neighbor, and heaven that are physical rather than spiritual in nature. It is materialistic thinking to judge God's essence on the basis of how he is portrayed, to judge our neighbors' quality on the basis of how they look and sound, and to judge heaven's state of love on the basis of its location. It is spiritual thinking, on the other hand, to judge God primarily by his essence and only secondarily by how he is portrayed; to judge our neighbors primarily by their quality and only secondarily by how they look and sound; and to judge heaven primarily as a state of love and only secondarily as a location.

Afterward the teacher told the students that a horse means a person's understanding of the Word. When people have spiritual thoughts as they read the Word, it is a living text to them. Therefore from a distance they look like living horses. When people have materialistic thoughts as they read the Word, it is a dead text to them. Therefore from a distance they look like dead horses.

624: I saw an angel with a piece of paper in his hand. On it were written the words The Marriage of Goodness and Truth. The angel descended from heaven into the world. I saw that in heaven the piece of paper shone, but bit by bit as the angel descended, the paper shone less and less. Eventually both the piece of paper and the angel became invisible to all but some uneducated people who were simple at heart. The angel explained to these people what the marriage of goodness and truth involves: each and every thing in the whole heaven and each and every thing in the whole world contains both together, because goodness and truth are united in the Lord God the Creator. Therefore nowhere does there exist anything that consists solely of goodness or solely of truth. In absolutely everything there is a marriage of goodness and truth. In the church there is a marriage of goodwill and faith, because goodwill relates to goodness and faith relates to truth.

625: When I was thinking deeply about the Lord's Second Coming, I saw heaven full of light from east to west and heard angels glorifying and celebrating the Lord using passages from the Word - both from portions of the Old Testament written by the prophets and portions of the New Testament written by the apostles. For the actual passages from the Word that were used in this glorification, see the account itself.

661: In the northeastern region there are places of instruction. People who take to heart the instruction offered there are called disciples of the Lord.

On one occasion when I was in the spirit, I asked teachers there whether they knew what the universal characteristics of heaven are and what the universal characteristics of hell are. They replied that the universal characteristics of heaven are three loves: a love of being useful; a love for possessing worldly wealth that comes from loving to do useful things with it; and true marriage love. The universal characteristics of hell are three loves that are the opposite of the three heavenly loves: a love for power that comes from loving ourselves; a love for possessing other people's wealth that comes from loving the world; and promiscuous love.

The account continues with a description of the first hellish love, which is love for power that comes from loving ourselves. The more the reins on this love are let out, the more laypeople with this love want to rule the world; clergy with this love, though, want to rule heaven. Having contact with people like this in hell confirmed for me that people who are caught up in this type of love experience fantasies. In hell, people like this are together in a particular valley. Their minds' highest delight is to imagine that they are emperors of emperors and kings of kings. People in another community there believe themselves to be gods. I witnessed the fact that when people from the first community see people from the second, they are so overcome that they fall on their knees and worship them.

Afterward I spoke with two angels, one of whom was the leader of a community in heaven, and the other was the highest ranking priest in that community. They told me that there are magnificent, gleaming things in their community; these things have their origin in the primary love felt by the people there, which is love of being useful rather than love for themselves. These leaders are inundated with honors, but they accept them not for their own sake but for the benefit to the authority of their office.

I then asked them how people can know whether it is loving themselves or loving the world or loving being useful that motivates their useful activities, since all three motivations make people useful. "Imagine a community," I said, "consisting of nothing but satans and another community consisting of nothing but angels. I would bet that the satans, driven by love for themselves and love of the world, are going to do just as many useful things for their community as the angels are going to do for theirs. Who can tell, then, what love inspires our useful actions?" The leader and the priest replied that satans do useful things in order to benefit their own reputations, to be raised to positions of honor, or to gain wealth. Angels, however, do useful things because they are useful. The main distinction between the satans and the angels is that all who believe in the Lord and abstain from evils because they are sins do useful things in response to the Lord, and therefore do what they do because they love being useful. All who do not believe in the Lord and do not abstain from evils because they are sins do useful things in response to themselves and for their own sake. They do what they do out of love for themselves or love of the world.

662: I went into a grove of trees and saw two angels talking to each other. I joined them. They were talking about what it is to crave all the wealth in the world. They said that many people who seem moral from the point of view of their actions and rational from the point of view of their conversation are actually devoted to that insane craving for wealth. When people indulge themselves in thoughts related to that craving, the craving takes the form of fantasies.

Because all who are in the spiritual world are allowed to indulge their fantasies, provided they do no evil to others, there are gatherings in the lower earth for people with similar fantasies. The location of these gatherings is widely known, so we went down and joined a group of people with this craving. We saw them sitting at tables on which there were massive piles of gold coins. They told us it was all the money in the nation. It was in fact, though, only a vision they created through their imagination - a fantasy. When we said they were insane, they stepped away from their tables and confessed that what we had said was true; but because that visualizing was tremendously pleasurable to them, they could not help going back to it from time to time and indulging in it again; it was extremely enticing to their senses. They added that if any of them sneak off with another's belongings or do evil to another, the perpetrators fall into a prison farther below and have to work to get food, clothing, and a few small coins. If they do evil there, they are punished and their coins are taken away.

663: I was listening to an argument between an ambassador and two priests concerning whether intelligence and wisdom, and therefore also prudence, come from God or from ourselves. The ambassador was adamant that they come from ourselves; the priests were arguing that they come from God. Some angels perceived, however, that the priests inwardly had the same beliefs as the ambassador - that intelligence and wisdom and therefore prudence come from ourselves. To make this clear, the angels asked the ambassador to take off his official robes and put on priestly vestments instead. When he did so, the ambassador put forward a series of arguments to show that all intelligence and prudence come from God. Then the priests were asked to take off their vestments and put on the robes of political office. Once they had done so, the priests spoke from their inner selves and said that all intelligence and prudence come from ourselves. The reason they made these statements was that spirits think they actually are whatever they are dressed to look like. After this exchange, the three became friends at heart and talked together as they traveled along a descending path. A bit later I saw them coming back, however.

664: The account treats first of the people whom the Word refers to as the elect. They are people who are discovered after death to have lived a life of goodwill and faith. They are separated from people who had not lived that life. In that sense they are chosen and prepared for heaven. [The truth is that] all are called; therefore to believe that only some but not all are specially chosen and predestined for heaven (either before birth or after it) is to accuse God of being unable to save and also of being unjust.

665-666: A newly arrived spirit told people in heaven that no one in Christianity knows what conscience is. Because angels could not believe that, they told some spirit to sound a trumpet and gather intelligent people so he could assess whether people know what conscience is. This was done. Among the people who came were politicians, scholars, physicians, and clergy.

The politicians were the first to be asked what conscience is. Their response was that it is a pain that arises from fear (either before or after the fact) of losing honor or wealth, or that it is the result of a melancholy humor caused by undigested food in the stomach, and so on.

Then the scholars were questioned to find out what they knew about conscience. Their response was that it is grief or anxiety that either moves from the body into the head or from the head into the body. It has various causes; it especially arises when people focus their minds on just one single issue. This is prone to happen when people's dominant love suffers a loss, leading sometimes to fantasies or madness. In some, it takes the form of disturbances of the brain in regard to religious issues, which people call an attack of conscience.

Next the physicians were asked what conscience is. They said that it is just a pain that arises from a number of pathological conditions, which they enumerated at great length. Many cases have responded well to drugs. (For the list of diseases thought to cause the pains that are called pangs of conscience, see the account itself.)

Finally the priests were asked what conscience is. They said it is the same as the feeling of contrition that precedes faith. They have found the gospel works to cure these attacks. They added that conscientious adherents in all religions, both the true and the fanatical, become scrupulous about salvation, even in issues that actually make no difference at all.

When the angels had heard all this, they could see that it was true - no one knows what conscience is. Therefore they sent down an angel from their community to teach the people. This angel stood in the middle of them and said, "Conscience is not some pain, as you all suppose. It is a life according to religious principles. This kind of life is practiced especially by people who are devoted both to faith and to goodwill. People who have a conscience say what they say from the heart and do what they do from the heart. " (The angel gave several examples.) "Therefore when we say, 'That person has a conscience,' we mean, 'That person is just. ' And the reverse. "

Upon hearing this, the participants fell into four groups. One group understood what the angel said and agreed with it. A second group did not fully comprehend it, but still felt favorable. A third group were unwilling to comprehend; they said, "What does conscience have to do with us?" A fourth group mocked the whole idea; they said, "Conscience is just gas pain!" The last two groups then went off to the left, but the first two groups went off to the right.

692: I was taken to a place where ancient Greek philosophers live. They call that place New Parnassus. I was told that now and then they send out delegates to summon some new arrivals from the world and find out from them what quality of wisdom exists on earth today. The delegates had recently come across two newcomers from the Christian world and had brought them to New Parnassus.

Shortly after arriving there the newcomers were asked, "What are the latest developments on earth [in regard to wisdom]?"

They replied, "One new development is that people have been found in the woods. Perhaps they were lost there in early childhood. Their faces look human, but they were not actually human. As a result, people in the world have concluded that human beings are nothing more than animals; the only major difference is that humans can articulate sounds and speak. Animals could be just as wise as humans if they were given the ability to articulate sounds. " And so on.

Based on this information the philosophers were able to determine what changes wisdom had undergone since their own times [on earth]. Especially telling to them was the fact that people no longer recognize the fundamental distinction between humans and animals, and do not realize that people are born with no more than the form of a human being. Through instruction they become human, and their degree of humanness depends on how receptive they are to that instruction. Truths lead us into wisdom; falsities lead us into insanity. Our doing evil turns us into predatory animals inside. All we have at birth is a faculty for knowing, understanding, and becoming wise. The purpose of our being born this way is that it allows us to be a being to which God can impart more and more wisdom, from the first steps of it to the highest heights.

The philosophers added something they had come to understand from the newcomers' report: wisdom, which had been in the east when they were alive on earth, was now in the west. Afterward they taught the newcomers how it is that human beings, who have been created in the form of God, could be turned upside-down into the form of a devil. For details, see the account itself.

693: Another gathering was announced in the place where the ancient philosophers live. The reason for it was that their emissaries had come across three new arrivals from the world. The first was a priest, the second was a politician, and the third was a philosopher.

Once they were brought there, the new arrivals were asked, "What are the latest developments on earth [in regard to wisdom]?"

"This is new," they replied: They had heard that someone on earth says he speaks with angels and spirits; that person has related many things about the state angels and spirits are in. Some of what he says is as follows: Human beings are just as human after death. The only difference is that after death we are clothed with a spiritual body, whereas before death we are in a physical body.

The philosophers then asked the priest what he had thought of those teachings while he was still on earth. His reply was that he had believed we would not live again as human beings until the day of the Last Judgment. Therefore he and his colleagues in the ministry thought of those teachings first as visions, then as something made up; eventually they did not know what to think of them. The ancient philosophers asked the priest whether people on earth had the rational capacity to see that human beings are still human after death, which would allow them to dismiss absurd notions of how souls spend their time - for example, the idea that souls flit around in the universe like breezes, or that they are constantly waiting for the Last Judgment to occur so that they can be reunited with their bodies. (In that case, our fate would be worse than any animal's.) The priest replied that some may make those arguments, but they fail to convince others. People see the coming together or reuniting of souls with their corpses and skeletons in the grave as something achieved by the omnipotence of God. And as soon as people mention omnipotence and faith, reason goes out the window.

Next, the ancient philosophers asked the politician what he thought about the new teachings just mentioned. His answer was that in the world he had been unable to believe that human beings are going to live on as humans after death, since everything that makes us human lies dead in the grave. He believed that the person presenting these new teachings was seeing ghosts but mistaking them for angels and spirits. The politician added, however, that he was now for the first time convinced by his own senses that he is just as human as he was before. Consequently he is ashamed of his former point of view.

The newly arrived philosopher said that he, too, had had much the same point of view, and so had other members of his school. The things that that writer had heard and seen, the philosopher labeled as just another opinion and hypothesis, like all the others he had gathered from other writers old and new.

The ancient philosophers were staggered to hear this. They were especially struck that Christians, whose revelation should give them more light than others have, are in such thick darkness concerning their own life after death. They said, "[While we were still alive in the physical world,] we knew about life after death and believed in it, and so did the sages of our day. " They added their observation that the light of wisdom that had been in the inner parts of the brain during their times on earth had now moved down below the nose to the mouth. There it appears to others like gleaming lips, and the speech of the mouth seems like wisdom.

Then one of the recruits at the event said, "How stupid the minds of earth-dwellers have become! I wish the followers of Democritus, who laugh at everything, and the followers of Heraclitus, who cry at everything, were here; what a lot of laughing and crying we would hear then!" The new arrivals were then given gifts of copper plates with hieroglyphics inscribed on them, and they departed.

694: Some new arrivals from the world were discovered, brought to the city below New Parnassus, and asked, "What are the latest developments on earth [in regard to wisdom]?" They replied that in the world they had believed there would be complete rest from labors after death. Yet when they arrived in the spiritual world they were told that there are similar administrative positions, functions, and types of work as there are in the world. This means that it is not a rest.

Wise people who were in attendance said, "Did you really believe that at this stage you were going to live in complete idleness, even though idleness causes both mental and physical lethargy, inertia, unresponsiveness, and loss of consciousness? These are death, not life. "

The new arrivals were taken around the city and saw administrators and artists at work. The newcomers were amazed at what they saw, because they had believed their souls would be living in some void until the new heaven and the new earth came about. They were taught that everything they were seeing was substantial and was called spiritual, whereas everything in their former world was material and was called earthly. Then they were told that this distinction exists because the two have different origins. Everything in the spiritual world takes shape from and is sustained by a sun that is pure love, whereas everything in the physical world takes shape from and is sustained by a sun that is pure fire. They were also taught that in the spiritual world there are not just administrative positions; there is also research of all kinds and also writing and books.

The newcomers were overjoyed to learn all this. As they were leaving, some young women came with pieces of needlework and embroidery of their own making and gave them to the visitors. They also sang the newcomers a song, whose angelic melody expressed their love for useful activity and the pleasure it brings.

695: I was brought to a meeting that was attended by some ancient philosophers. I was asked what people in my world know about inflow. My answer was this: The only inflow they know about is the inflow of their sun's heat and light into the objects in nature, both living and inanimate. They have no idea there is such a thing as an inflow from the spiritual world into the physical world, even though that inflow is what actually causes all the amazing things they see in the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. (I listed some examples.) Because they do not recognize the existence of this inflow, they convince themselves that nature is the source. They become materialists and eventually atheists.

696: I spoke with followers of Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz about [their theories called] physical inflow, occasional inflow, and preestablished harmony and heard the arguments they used to support their own hypothesis. Because they were limited to the supporting arguments and were unable to rise above them and examine the issue with their intellect, they decided to draw lots in order to see which theory was correct. Spiritual inflow was the answer they drew, which is closer to occasional inflow than to the other theories.

697: I was led to a hall where young adults were being initiated into various issues related to wisdom. This was accomplished through a discussion of a topic proposed by a leader there. On that occasion the topic for discussion was, What is the soul and how do we experience it? There was a lectern. The respondents would stand at it to give their answers.

The first speaker stood up and said that no one since the world was created has been able to determine what the soul is and how we experience it. Because people have known, however, that there is a soul inside us, they have pondered where it is. Some thinkers conjectured that it is in the pineal gland, which sits between the cerebrum and the cerebellum in our heads. The speaker said he had originally espoused this view, but when many later rejected it, he too had moved away from that opinion.

The second speaker stood up and said he believed the seat of the soul was in the head, since that is where the intellect is; but because he was unsure, at different times he followed different authorities with regard to where it is in the brain - those who believe it is in the three ventricles of the brain, those who say the striated body, those the medullary, those the cortical substances, and those the dura mater. He left it up to the individual to decide.

The third speaker stood up and said that the seat of the soul is in the heart and extends to the blood. He supported this view with passages from the Word that mention the heart and the soul.

The fourth speaker stood up and said that since childhood he had sided with the ancients in believing that the soul is not in one part of the body, but is throughout it, because it is a spiritual substance, which can be said to fill the body but cannot be said to occupy this or that place within it. He added that "soul" means life, and life is present throughout the body.

The fifth speaker stood up and said that in his view the soul was something pure that could be compared to ether or air. This was his belief because people think the soul will be something like this after it leaves the body.

When the speakers had finished, the wise people in the balcony concluded that none of the speakers knew what the soul is. Therefore they asked the leader, who had proposed the question, to come down and teach. After coming down [from his platform], he said that the soul is the essence itself within a human being. And because an essence is nothing without a form, the soul is the purest human form. It is the truly human form; in every part of it wisdom and love dwell together, along with all their perceptions and desires. "When you were in the physical world," he said, "you believed that you would be souls after death. [You have in fact died]; therefore you yourselves are now souls. " And so on. His statement was supported by the following passage in the Book of Creation (Genesis 2:7): "Jehovah God breathed the breath of lives into Adam's nostrils, and the human being turned into a living soul. "

731-752: I saw an angel with a trumpet. With it he called together the most celebrated Christian thinkers. The topic was what they had believed in the world about the joys of heaven and eternal happiness. The reason for the event was that someone had told people in heaven that no one in Christianity knows anything about these joys and this happiness. About half an hour later we saw six groups of well-educated Christians arrive. When the question was posed to them regarding what they had known about the joys of heaven and eternal happiness, the first group said that they believed it was simply a matter of being allowed into heaven and all its accompanying celebratory joys, as if they were merely being allowed into a home where a wedding and its accompanying festivities were taking place. The second group said they believed that that joy and happiness consists in extremely enjoyable interactions and delicious conversations with angels. The third group said they believed that that joy and happiness consists in dining with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The fourth group said they believed that that joy and happiness consists in the delight of a garden paradise. The fifth group said they believed that that joy and happiness consists in the possession of great power, tremendous wealth, and more-than-regal magnificence. The sixth group said they believed that that joy and happiness consists in glorifying God in a celebration that goes on forever. So that these well-educated thinkers could find out whether the things they mentioned truly were the joys of heaven, they had an opportunity to experience their joys. Each group had this experience separately. The purpose was for them to learn by living experience whether they had merely imagined these activities would be joyful or whether these activities actually were joyful. Most people go through this when they cross over from the physical world to the spiritual world (731, 732, 733).

Soon afterward, the group that thought heavenly joy would take the form of extremely enjoyable interactions and delicious conversations with angels was allowed to experience what it imagined to be joy. Because these were external joys, however, and were not internal, the enjoyment wore off after a few days and they left (734).

Then the group that believed heavenly joys would consist in dining with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were allowed to have that experience. They, too, came to feel that those joys were only external and not internal, and became tired of them and left (735).

A similar thing happened to the group that believed heavenly joy and eternal happiness consisted in great power, tremendous wealth, and more-than-regal magnificence (736).

A similar thing also happened to the group that believed heavenly joy and eternal happiness consisted in the joys of a garden paradise (737).

A similar thing also happened to the group that believed heavenly joy and eternal happiness consisted in perpetually glorifying God in a celebration that goes on forever. Eventually this group was taught what glorifying God truly means in the Word (738).

Finally, a similar thing also happened to the group that believed they would come into heavenly joy and happiness if they were simply allowed into heaven, and that the joys they would experience there would be much like those we experience when we go into a home where a wedding is occurring and take part in its festivities. They were shown by living experience, however, that the only people who experience joys in heaven are people who have lived the life of heaven - that is, a life of goodwill and faith. For people who have lived the opposite kind of life, heaven is actually a place of torment. Therefore people like this leave heaven and associate with others like themselves (739).

Since the angels had gathered from this that no one in the physical world nowadays knows what the joys of heaven are like and what eternal happiness is like, they instructed the angel with the trumpet to choose ten of the participants and bring them to a community in heaven. In this way they could see with their own eyes and perceive in their own minds what heaven is and what the joys there are like. The angel did so. After the ten were brought in, they started with a tour of the magnificent palace of the leader of that community (740). Then they toured the gardens next to the palace (741). Afterward they saw the leader himself and his dignitaries in all their finery (742). Invited to dine with the leader, they saw a table setting with amazing accoutrements unlike anything that eyes on earth have ever seen. At the table the leader taught them about heavenly joys and eternal happiness. He said that in essence these consist of inner bliss, which leads in turn to outward delight. The very essence of inner bliss is a desire to be of use (743, 744). After dinner, the leader ordered some of the wisest members of the community to be summoned. These people talked with the visitors at length about what exactly the inner bliss that constitutes eternal happiness is, where it comes from, how it turns external delights into joys, and so on (745-746). After that the ten had the opportunity to see a wedding in that heaven, which is described (747-749); and lastly, to hear preaching (750-751). Having seen and heard all this, being full of newfound knowledge of heaven, and feeling happy at heart, the ten went back down (752).

846-851: This account deals with this revelation. The Lord chose to manifest himself to me and open the inner levels of my mind, allowing me to see what is in heaven and what is in hell. By so doing, he revealed secrets that are of greater excellence and importance than any other secrets that have been disclosed before. They are as follows: (1) In each and every detail of the Word there is a spiritual meaning, which is not apparent in its literal meaning. Therefore the writing in the Word consists of correspondences between spiritual things and earthly things. (2) What those correspondences are like has been made clear. (3) Human beings live on after they die. (4) What heaven and hell are like. Also teachings regarding baptism and the Holy Supper. (5) There is a sun in the spiritual world that is pure love from the Lord, who is surrounded by that sun. The light that emanates from that sun is wisdom and the heat that emanates from it is love. It is also the source of faith and goodwill. All things that emanate from that sun are spiritual and alive. The sun of the physical world, on the other hand, is pure fire. All things that emanate from this sun are earthly and dead. (6) There are three levels [of life]. They have been unknown until now. (7) There is information about the Last Judgment. The Lord the Savior is the God of heaven and earth. There is information about the new church and its teachings; about the inhabitants of other planets and about the worlds in the universe (846). (8) There is also information about marriage love. This love is spiritual among spiritual people, earthly among earthly people, and merely carnal among adulterous people (847). Angels learned through eyewitness experience that although these secrets are more excellent than any other secrets disclosed before, many today think of them as having no value at all (848). I heard some people in the lower earth murmuring that if I performed miracles, they would believe [what I had written]. I replied that they would not be convinced by miracles any more than Pharaoh and the Egyptians were, or any more than Jacob's descendants were when they danced around the golden calf in the wilderness, or any more than Jews were when they saw miracles performed by the Lord himself (849). Finally, why the Lord revealed these secrets to me instead of to someone in the clergy (850).

The things that are in the accounts of memorable occurrences that come after the chapters are true. Before the Lord's Coming, similar things were seen and heard by the prophets; after the Lord's Coming, similar things were seen and heard by the apostles - Peter, Paul, and especially John in the Book of Revelation. The account lists examples (851).